I would like to build on what RTFirefly started. A big societal difference between the US and many other developed countries is we don’t walk anywhere! (a couple major cities excluded) We go everywhere in cars. We build neighborhoods without sidewalks. If we do build sidewalks in new developments, they don’t go anywhere. If many of us could walk to work, school, the grocery store, even to friends’ houses or out to lunch, we’d be getting a lot more exercise.
This especially effects kids, since they are often confined to the house for safety. And it’s sad.
Actually, no. I see no reason why civilised people can’t discuss this in a rational manner. So far, that seems to hold true for this thread. There’s no need to wish for it to degenerate by sending it somewhere the OP obviously didn’t intend it to be.
I think some very good point have been made so far in this thread, with regard to exercise, dependency on cars, availability and price of unhealthy food.
I spend quite a lot of time in the US, and live in Europe. The cultural differences are relatively small, but the diet differences are huge, if you’ll forgive the choice of words.
There’s always a precentage of people that have an illness that prevents them from losing weight. And they should not be marginalised by some sort of draconian War on Fat. But the simple fact to this relative outsider seems to be that the average American eats too damn much, and eats too damn unhealthy.
Regards,
Coldfire
[sub]100 kilograms, and hoping for 90[/sub]
I’ve been waiting tables and watching how people eat for the past few years. These are the trends I’ve noticed.
Salads are commonly asked for with extra dressing. It gets to the point where I hardly see any green on the plate.
If an entree comes with one side, it will normally be some form of potato, normally baked. Most of the time the baked potato is asked for loaded- bacon, cheese, butter and sour cream. If it comes with two sides, the greens that they order is the item that has been touched the least.
Childrens meals consist of some form of deep fried meat (normally chicken) with fries.
Many times I’ve heard people comment on how they are full but they continue to eat until at least the meat is gone from the plate.
Also, half the time that some one orders water to drink they put sugar or artificial sweetner in it.
Another thing I’ve noticed is how much I’m pushed to try to get someone to eat unhealthy. I know that I’m not going to be making as high of a tip from some one ordering salad and a glass of water. The restaurant won’t be making as much either. Servers are constantly pushed to suggestive sell. If we mention a specific appetizer, we’re more likely to sell it, even to some one who normally doesn’t order appetizers. I’m suppose to describe dessert, not just say what we have. I make my living off of tempting people to eat more. I hate that I do it too.
As for the driving everywhere, I live about a quarter of a mile away from the center of campus where all my classes are. I was telling a few of my co-workers about it one day. One woman was completely amazed that I would walk that far (which I don’t really consider a huge distance). It baffled her when I said it was more of an inconvenience for me to drive and find parking.
How so, Coldfire (or any other European), other than amount? I’ve never been to Europe (I’ll remedy that one of these days) and am very interested in the differences.
You could be close there, Blonde, but I think you have to expand number 4. There are many prescription medications that cause weight gain, either directly or by increasing the appetite. Also, people who don’t process insulin very well are often overweight because of the role insulin plays in our bodies, and being overweight can lead to insulin problems.
When my uncle came from France to visit us, he had a hard time eating the food. He spent half of his visit in the bathroom. He said that the food was too greasy for him. It wasn’t just fast food either. Going to a sitdown restaurant would effect him the same way.
Refills are also a big difference between the US and Europe. I’ve seen people go through about six drinks while eating here. While six glasses of water will probably only make you have to pee a lot, six glasses of coke is adding a lot of sugar and sodium to your body.
People claim I’m thin but I’m exactly where the height-weight charts tell me I’m supposed to be.
It seems to me that I eat all kinds of junk. I’m a veggie-phobe and hate to cook, which means I tend to eat weird meals. Like cheese toast for dinner, or pound cake for breakfast.
The only thing I do that keeps me from getting fat is that I tend to eat only one big meal a day. A big meal is anything that goes over 700 calories. So if I go to Denny’s for breakfast, I might skip lunch and have a Budget Gourmet for dinner. If I have a festive lunch, then dinner might be a cup of ice cream and a few handfuls of potato chips.
It seems my chunkier peers eat equal sized meals…with all of them being “heavy”. For instance, they might eat at McDonald’s for lunch and eat pork chops and pasta for dinner. I’m not physically active enough where this would be a good idea.
People think I’m a number one in Blonde’s list because they see me eating garbage, but I’m not. They don’t know that I have garbage budgeted into my daily intake, and that I’m actually counting calories when I thrust my hand into the candy jar.
I do worry about my carb intake. Yesterday, everything I ate was sweet or doughy.
Ding-ding-ding! You have answered correctly - it’s OK to eat high-fat/calorie foods occasionally, but 3 meals a day of that will usually put some pounds on.
One eating characteristic that I’m trying to teach my mother out of is: eating every single damn bit on your plate. I have to say that I have never dined with an overweight person who didn’t scrape their plate clean. Put a napkin on top, pour salt on it…if you’re eating in a restaurant, you are ingesting entirely too many calories as it is.
It’s not easy to give up the food, but studies show obesity is right up there on the cause of death, #2 behind smoking - perhaps #1 now? I’ll have to go look that up.
monstro, that sounds like exactly how I ate most of my life. One meal a day was the norm. I never ate breakfast, rarely ate lunch. It worked well when I was in my twenties, but once I hit my mid-thirties, I gained eating like that. I had been doing it for years, and stayed thin. All of a sudden my body changed, and I gained weight. What a drag.
Then I started Atkins. Now I am eating three meals a day, and I find if I eat a good breaklfast it does really make things easier. I don’t get to the point where I’m really hungry and have to break down and eat junk. Junk food is not in my diet anymore. So it feels like I’m eating more (three meals a day, compared to one the way I used to eat), but I am losing weight, and feeling a lot better. When I didn’t eat all day, by the time night came I was pretty hungry and more apt to overeat, binge, or eat the wrong foods. It takes more work, both planning meals and cooking real food (not to mention running to the store for fresh veggies 2-3 times a week!), but I feel so much better during the day.
Another point is that our food portions are BIG here. We go out and want to get the most for our money at restaurants. I dislike the buffet types of places because one is presented with the idea that a person must eat more to get their money’s worth from it. That doesn’t help at all with keeping weight off.
My step-father is an example of the kind of guy who loves buffet style restaurants and he will go back a few times. Why? He’s a big guy AND he wants to get the most out of each dollar. I never eat at these kinds of places and I spread out my meals at home by eating smaller portions. It makes your food last longer, you go to the grocery store less often. I also drink more water to fend off the hunger and I do not enter a grocery store if I haven’t eaten.
I drink a huge glass of fat-free/skim milk or water before each meal and I eat slowly (helps your body realize you are eating and not gulping food). I never eat past 8pm if I can help it. These aren’t diet tips, it’s common sense. And thankfully, salads are more common now at the fast food places so the temptation for crap is lessened. America has too much fast food.
Some medications which have been used to treat convulsions have been found to be highly affective in treating compulsive behaviors. I have been taking one for the last two or three months and I have no problems with compulsive eating (or shopping).
I actually forget to eat since I don’t live by a regular schedule. Power bars and that sort of thing have been helpful when I really do need to eat something.
But I’m not losing weight. My body clings to every calorie. (I would have been great at surviving winters 20,000 years ago.)
So it’s not always a matter of food intake. What I need is more activity and exercise.
I am worried and I’m scared. I need to try healthier foods for home. I always wondered about the theory of eating the way your ancestors ate, but have to agree that we don’t work the way they did. I spend most of my workday on my 'arse, talking on the phone only to leave for an hour where I drive to a thai buffet.
I see it in my oldest son- our habits at home have rubbed off on him and he’s quiet a chunky kid. And my parents get mad at me because my husband and I try to control what and how much he eats- its a constant battle. My husband, on the other hand is physically fit and very consciencious of exercise and portion control. Yet my husband has the worst eating habits- no vegetables or fruits unless its V-8 juice and high in carbohydrates like bread and pasta. Working moms, its hard for us sometimes. When I get home, its dark and we are not venturing out for a walk. Maybe we should march upstairs and downstairs, lol.
Well, don’t underestimate the amount factor. Americans eat a lot compared to Europeans. A good indicator is the average portion size in a restaurant, be it the sit-down-and-use-cutlery kind or the fast food kind. I usually order the smallest portion in the US, and I tend to have trouble finishing even that. And I’m a big guy (though not necessarily a big eater, ask my skinny-and-can-eat-a-cow-for-breakfast-without-gaining-weight girlfriend :)) at 6’2" and approximately 215 pounds or so.
Then, there’s the actual choice of food. When I have breakfast here in Holland, it’s fairly basic. Two cereal bars of 70 grams each during the week, and a couple of sandwiches (diet margarine) on the weekends. Lunch is 4 sandwiches and a glass of milk, possibly with a banana or apple. Dinner is fairly standard: usually meat-potatoes-vegetables, and a not-too-fat desert. I wouldn’t call this a diet by any stretch of the imagination, it’s how I’ve been eating for years. It’s also nothing out of the ordinary: a lot, if not most, people have similar eating habits over here.
Now, honestly, tell me. How many Americans eat like me, and how many Americans hop in their car in the morning and stop by Micky D’s/BK/Del Taco for their breakfast? Same goes for lunch.
Refills were mentioned - a good one. You don’t get free refills here, and soda cups tend to be a lot smaller, too. A large cup at McD’s over here is half a liter, whereas that’s actually a “small” or “medium” in some US fast food places I’ve been in. Plus, who cares what size it is - free refills!
I’m not trying to judge anyone here - I’m just reporting what I see, on both sides of the Atlantic. And based on that, I can only conclude that American eating habits are out of control to an extent. The mere fact that Canadians are far less fat as a people (though still larger than most Europeans) tells you enough, seeing as they’re culturally quite similar, in that they also depend on cars a lot, et cetera.
It’s cultural. And while I am not going to doubt anyone’s stories here when they tell me their situation is different, one can only conclude that the US as a whole has an eating problem than can be resolved by not eating so damn much.
I’d say you’re right for the most part, Coldfire. (And Blonde too.) Many of my overweight friends clean their plates even when the plates are too full. I think it’s habit. Luckily, my mom never made me clean my plate, so I generally don’t unless I serve myself. Especially not at a restaurant; I agree that the portion sizes are insane. One of those meals makes three regular ones, at least. I often wonder how fat I’d be if I did clean my plate. :shudder:
I do think food selection has a lot to do with it, though. I notice since I’ve started Atkins that I am satisfied with less food and often will have to make myself eat something, which I fully attribute to cutting out the majority of the carbs I was eating. No sugar, no flour (for now), and my carbs are coming mainly from fresh veggies. And my husband, who is a big eater and does clean his plate, has stopped eating nearly as much. He barely eats any more than I do, now.
skeptic_ev, yes, I have had to loose up to thirty pounds to get into playing shape (basketball). I could probably stand to loose about twenty right now.
I have to watch what I eat or else I pack it on. I never had to worry about that when I was younger, I could eat all the food I could handle and not gain weight. I shocked people with the amount of food I could eat!
Not any more.
I feel hungry all the time and I have to limit what I eat in order to not gain the weight. Im also trying to eat BETTER. Im also very active - so that helps keep my mind off eating. If I had a less exciting desk-type-job I could see myself falling into a weight gain scenario.
What bothers me the most about the weight gain in society is that it will end up costing everyone more dollars. Cars will have to be engineered for the larger person, theatres will have fewers seats so the ticket prices will go up, same with airplanes, thrill rides, etc. Not to mention health care costs. These people are also limited in their job opportunities.
I sometimes get the feeling that many of the obese people I see just dont care that they are inconveniencing others. Sort of like the smoker that doesnt care about their second hand smoke getting in your face.
Im still skeptical when someone tells me that they cant loose weight no matter how little they eat or how much they excersise. If that were the case then their body should be offered up to science as an example of some sort of “positive energy producing divice” which uses more energy than it takes in.
The clinically-documented chemically-imbalanced excluded, of course.
That’s understandable skepticism, whuckfistle, and in many cases (I’m sure) appropriate, but didn’t you yourself say that you could eat anything you wanted when you were younger? And it’s not like you have a desk job now; you’re pretty active. (You probably did have a “desk job” when you were a kid, though: it’s called school.) Eating incorrectly for many years (which most Americans do; witness the nutrition-void crap convenience foods marketed to little kids) has a cumulative detrimental effect on the body.
Recent studies have shown that a calorie does not, in fact, equal a calorie, regardless of the makeup of said calorie. (I’m specifically thinking of a study I saw on MSN not too long ago wherein one group got a fairly high-calorie, high-fat diet and the other group got a low-cal, low-fat, high-carb diet. The first group lost more weight. I’ll dig up the cite if I can find it.) Fat, protein, and carbohydrates act in different ways once they get into your body. That’s why diabetics have to be so aware of the glycemic index.
I think anyone can lose weight, but for some people the measures required are very drastic, which is why they say they can’t do it. I’m thinking the longer you’ve been overweight, the harder it becomes.
Our society also pushes us to eat, or rather more accurately consume. Look at all the commercial you see. I’d say a majority of them revolve around food. You can’t get away from temptation. There are tons of fast food and soda commercials. They’re also advertising easy to prepare foods. Most of the fast food is showing how much you can get for such a low price.
Some of those fast foods have started trying to advertise how healthy they can be. KFC comes to mind, saying how much better they are then a whopper. The entire ad campaign now implies that they are good for you.
A few years ago Subway began their diet campaign. Now they’re using the food as an excuse. “It’s okay, I had Subway for lunch.” They’re implying that if you eat a healthy lunch you can indulge during dinner.
As for low to no carb diets, I don’t agree with them. They might be fine if people did them properly, but most people don’t. Many times I’ve watched people eat nothing but meat for a meal. That much meat intake can not be good for you. Your body needs vegetables, dairy and grain too.
Yes, I’m sure a lot of people do low-carb diets incorrectly. I bet, though, that a lot of people who do Atkins (for instance) correctly actually increase their vegetable consumption. Yes, it’s just 20 grams of carbs a day (for the first two weeks), but two cups of salad and one cup of veggies is more than it sounds like. As to seeing people just eat meat—well, if you’re on that type of diet and you had your allowed carbs at lunch, then you have to skip them for dinner. (Although it’s better to have them spread throughout the day so that your blood sugar stays stable.)
BUT—it’s illogical to just say "that much (anything) cannot be good for you” just because that’s the prevailing opinion. I’ve said this in another thread and I’ll say it here: not too long ago, everyone knew the Earth was flat and that maggots appeared on rotting garbage by way of spontaneous generation. Are we so sure that everything we take for granted is true?
