Of course not. Where do you people come up with these strawmen? Sheesh!
People go to those classes to learn that breakfast is indeed important, as are certain kinds of fat, and to learn about good sources of whole grains, good recipes for vegetables, what proper portion sizes are, how to deal with temptation, whether Atkins is a good idea, etcetera.
Sounds pretty evil to me.
That’s fair, I wonder what it takes to learn the facts?
10 weeks of classes. So, should everyone who needs to lose weight take 10 weeks of classes? Just curious how much time and money it’s going to cost the average person to lose weight.
Indeed, that simple message isn’t worth big bucks. Curious that it wasn’t offered as part of an expensive course on weight loss. Obviously, the instructor has no incentive to portray weight loss as complex. It’s not like he’s making money on that complexity.
Take your weight loss course 10 years ago, or 10 years from now, or with a different instructor, how much of the course would be unchanged?
Don’t be silly. I found something that worked for me, and I worked it. YMMV, obviously.
I don’t know, but one could wish that such information is available for far less. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is, but as I’ve said, one has to wade through a lot of crap to find the gems.
Yeah, it was this nothing more than a huge scam. :rolleyes: If the instructor were being forthright, she wouldn’t have accepted money for her time and effort. She would also have paid for the materials out of her own pocket.
Are you suggesting that science might advance over time? Shocking! :eek:
Agreed. I think people (including me in my previous post) are confusing the fact that biology is complicated (or, more accurately, complex) with the notion that the process of improving weight and health is difficult. Is the science complex? Sure. Is losing weight difficult? You bet. However, it is quite possible for many people to see fantastic results by applying simple concepts (more calories out than in) and taking simple actions (reducing portion sizes).
But, as we know, that doesn’t work for everyone, for a number of complicated reasons (psychological, social, genetic, hormonal, etc.). Those folks may then need to add increasing levels of difficulty (ie. classes, research, food plans, personal trainers, medications) to the process until they find something that works.
Urk. Sorry to be an English Major, but I need to amend that sentence (hit “submit” too soon):
However, many people see fantastic results by applying simple concepts (more calories out than in) and taking simple actions (reducing portion sizes).
Whew, that’s better.
I don’t think any of those things would work because eating is not a temporary condition.
I think we have to start viewing food like sex. People need long-term solutions that allow them to have sex without getting pregnant every 9 months. We know that people will have sex; telling them to be celibate is foolish. It doesn’t work. When it’s something that’s so basic a biological compunction, it needs constant treatment, not once.
I get a shot every 3 months that renders me damn nigh infertile. I’m not just infertile if I have sex in moderation during those 3 months, or just have healthy sex, or only USDA approved sex. I’m infertile (unless I’m unlucky) despite overindulging in sex.
I think that eventually this is the only workable solution for obesity. Either a medication that will make us all less hungry, or one that will make us able to eat without getting fat. We either have to kill the drive or deflect the repercussions.
Or make people wear chastity belts over their mouths. 
Disagree. Most of those things would help. Taxes on junk food and subsidies on whole foods would make the “but I can’t afford to eat well.” I’m not sure I agree that it would be best economically, but I do think making a $3 bag of Doritos $5 while making a $3 bag of grapes $1 would help. A stigma would help - if you couldn’t eat at your desk, for instance. When I was younger, you didn’t eat while walking though stores - the mall had a single small food court. Now it seems every third store wants to sell you an extra large pretzel so you can eat while you browse. Restricting places - at least in public - for eating, like places in public for smoking, would cut down on munching.
The biggest one is schools, though. Why do schools - elementary schools! - have pop machines. Our school had a pop machine - hidden in the teachers lounge. Taco Bell should not be the provider of school lunches. Habits developed young are hard to break - and we are teaching our children that having a burger, fries and coke every day for lunch is ok.
The good news is that I do think its changing - companies are on the whole grain kick - it may still be loaded with corn syrup. WalMart carries organics. Our school offers kids salads every day in addition to whatever is coming off the line - and the surprising thing - the kids will occationally eat them! A girlfriend teaches at a school that only offers ‘healthy’ lunches - including organic and vegetarian options. The one (!) overweight kid my kids interact with currently is on their soccer team - which is an improvement over sitting in front of the TV.
There are a lot of things that can be done now without needing to wait for the “magic fat burning pill” - which may come - and could potentially help now - if we choose as a society to do them.
Noooooo! It’s hard enough for the farmers without further reducing the price of fruit and vegetables.
Your other suggestions are quite good, though. Carry on.
Is there a steady progression of ideas in nutrition? I think it’s more like a cacaphony of differing opinions and constantly fluctuating concepts. We have diet and exercise programs coming out of our ears. Each one is different than the last, depending on what the author thinks is most important/will differentiate their product. With all of that information, the society is getting fatter and fatter every year. That’s not what I call advancement.
It seems like the less we knew about nutrition, the thinner we were. All of those thin people from the 50s didn’t know jack about grams of carbs, glycemic index, and sophisticated menu planning. They just ate less at each meal and were more physically active than us.
There absolutely is a progression of ideas. And it is good. Unfortunately, with every sound idea, there are ten bad ones. And this is why finding the good ideas is…
wait for it…
drumroll please…
Not Easy!
Tada!
And by God, before we knew about evil-lution, our daughters never got pregnant out of wedlock.
Look, it’s not that “eat less/exercise more” is an unsound concept. It’s just very very very incomplete. I’m sure that you’d agree that two Pop Tarts is less food than a big bowl of salad. I’m also sure you’d agree that it’s not a healthy alternative. Do you not see that in some instances “eat less” is actually worse? Perhaps a better trite sound bite is “eat healthier.”
There’s a problem with that, however. The person spouting it would actually have to answer the followup question “How?” instead of being content to merely ejaculate mindless snark.
And I’m sure you’d agree – to make this relevant to the OP – that any person who can’t figure out that Pop Tarts are not an optimally nutritious food ought not to be allowed to breed for the sake of our species.
And I’d hope you’d agree – in the real world, it gets far more complex than Pop Tarts vs salad.
Don’t worry. All the Pop Tarts have made me too fat to find a mate.
Plus they didn’t suck down 2 gallons of carbonated sugar water daily, as young tykes are wont to do these days. Shit, just banning soda would do wonders for America’s waistlines.
What the fuck does this even mean? You’re trying to make me out to be anti-science, and it’s not going to work. This is simple observation, a cornerstone of the scientific method:
Population A (US circa 1955) - People are physically active and eat small portioned meals.
Population B (US circa 2005) - People are less active and eat larger portioned meals.
Population A has a significantly lower incidence of obesity than Population B.
What is the root cause of B’s obesity problem? I can sure as fuck tell you it isn’t a knowledge problem. It isn’t that B is missing out, somehow, on the last 50 years of nutritional research. A never had the benefits of that research, and didn’t have an obesity problem.
Clearly, there are ways to avoid obesity that do not include expanding our knowledge of the subject, the proof is in our history. Now, can YOU prove that increasing knowledge of nutrition will reduce obesity? There is no evidence of that. We’ve supposedly been learning more about nutrition, due to the scientific effort, and we keep getting fatter and fatter.
If “eat less” means trading in a healthy salad for pop tarts, then clearly the concept will not work for you.
I’ve spent a lot of time reading this thread, mulling over the various opinions and theories offered. I was initially drawn into reading because I am very worried about our children – many are overweight and have a lifelong struggle with weight and accompanying diseases like diabetes ahead of them.
In a June issue Time Magazine had an excellent series on eating, weight and nutrition. The corn/government subsidy connection was addressed in a story about grain fed vs. grass fed beef. (Bottom line: cattle aren’t meant to eat corn, it causes health problems for them and for us to feed it to them … but it’s done anyway because it brings them to market faster and cheaper.)
There was also an article about the daily ritual of the shared family meal and how that, while it has largely gone by the wayside, it is making a comeback as people realize the benefits. (Shared time together, relating family stories, more family togetherness means children learn the art of conversation, problem-solving and etiquette; also teens who get into less trouble.)
A point that struck me in this last story is, experts have found that we are not, in fact, as pressed for time as we make out that we are. It just can be used as a convenient excuse. “I run, run, run all the time – when do I have time to cook?” It’s just as parents buy too quickly into the “my teenager won’t eat with me!” myth. Teens, when asked, say they would in fact like to eat a family dinner with a parent(s) more often. But it’s just easier to say, “you know teenagers!” and let them take a plate of food to their room to continue IM’ing with friends.
Well to this I say, Enough. Many people in this thread have made the point that everyone knows a sack of chips on the couch is not a healthy lifestyle. Yet the reasons people do it are myriad and complex, and attacking them is not as simple as saying “eat better, eat less, exercise more.”
I humbly submit that it is. You can order your life so that you have the time, effort and knowledge necessary to live differently than you do now.
People, in my experience, are very quick to ruefully explain how they have “no time” for the things they claim they really do want to do. But when you examine their lives, you see that they have ordered them just as they want them. There’s plenty of time to stop by the Starbucks and get your fattening latte and muffin, when it would take probably the same amount of time to eat a bowl of spoon-size shredded wheat before leaving home. People have more time than they think they do – yet they willfully insist that they’re at the mercy of their schedules and can’t possibly fit another thing into them, like shopping for reasonably healthy foods and preparing them each night.
I hesitate to offer myself as an example because I loathe how smug and sanctimonious something like this sounds. But, I feel I must. I’m the full-time working mother of three children; two are school-age and one is about to turn 2. I regularly grocery-shop, and this summer I participate in a garden co-op of a friend which has given me a weekly basket of fresh vegetables. Each night I come home, nurse the baby and prepare a dinner for five. I clean it up, organize the homework, make sure everyone is bathed and tucked in… (Since it’s summer right now I do a little weeding and watering in the garden, instead of presiding over homework.) Do some laundry, straighten up a little and go to bed.
You notice what I’m leaving out. I don’t watch television. I rarely get on the computer. My children are involved in activities which they can attend after school. We’re not every night at the ballpark (which actually would be good for most American kids; I’m not knocking organized sports). We don’t eat on the fly. We eat at home, every night.
My point is (and please excuse me if I do come off as smug – I’m trying not to) – is that one can choose how to arrange one’s life. We’re not at the mercy of our schedule – we are in charge of our own lives. Too busy to do anything but grab fast food? Think again. If someone’s not going to be happy unless plugged into television or computer for several hours a day (or whatever) if you refuse to give that up, well then you’re right, you probably have no time to purchase, prepare and serve healthy meals.
Another, and equally important point – I believe our worse natures are appealed to. Our land of plenty has provided us with more and more fast food stores with large portions sizes and it’s very, very easy to succumb to convenience foods. It’s also very easy to eat calories you don’t suspect are there. I was appalled to find out that sugar and high fructose corn syrup are the first or second ingredients in non-sugared cereals like Corn Chex, Rice Crispies and Cheerios. I have gotten to the point that I only buy the shredded wheat – it’s the only thing I can find with nothing else added! My children like it because I raised them on it. That and oatmeal blended with yogurt is our standard breakfast fare.
I’d like to fit more exercise into my life at the moment, but it’s pretty busy tending to the basics of life. I readily agree if I’d place higher priority on exercise, there are things I could drop off. I’d guess that the moment that would be housecleaning. Probably gardening. I try to walk at lunch at work.
America as a whole needs to forget the lessons learned of the 1970s and the me generation. This mindset puts desires first, tells us that we “deserve” what we merely desire. By the same token, we can’t succumb to what our children merely “want” versus what they need. And what is that? Firm parenting by adults with the strength to say “no” –1,000 times if necessary in the cereal aisle – parents who insist the teenager eat at the table, talk about her day (or at least be present when others talk about theirs). Soon enough they’ll be out on their own and can do as they please. Tell them that. For now, we eat together, we all eat the same thing, and we live our lives for one another as much as for ourselves.
Good night … and good luck.
You’ve said that the sciense changes over time, and therefore cannot be trusted. This is exactly the kind of thinking I attribute to a creationist.
Another cornerstone of science is to control for variables. You have not accounted for increased automobile usage, greater availability of junk foods, the (still questionable) corn problem, and convenience foods in your analysis.
But let’s let that lie. I agree with you. Eat less, exercise more. That’s all there is to it. Four legs good, two legs bad.
Don’t shut the door on this yet. Let’s take it to the next step: Why are people eating more and exercising less?
I think America as a whole needs to realize that we have never yet managed to defy basic biological urges through will. Our ancestors weren’t stronger, more moral, better people. They just didn’t have the opportunities to indulge themselves that we do.
And the drop in smoking, which may act as an appetite suppressant or alternative comfort source.
Excellent point. And this is in large part where education comes in. Our world is not the same as it was in 1950, and we need to learn new coping skills for our new environment.