The only reason I can bring myself to exercise at all is because I have my bike pointed at my screen and can watch my DVDs as I go. And I still hem and haw and find various ways to avoid doing it, until it’s two in the morning and my subconscious can stall no longer.
At some point my subconscious is going to realize that I AM going to ride that bike and am NOT going to sleep until I do, but until it catches on I will continue to have a completely destroyed sleep schedule and suffer accordingly.
Depends on how you define “message”
-Permit no medical treatment for anyone over a certain BMI (or some other measure of obesity you prefer.)
-Heavily subsidize/tax food/drink reflecting it’s nutritional/caloric value.
-Alternatively, you could offer obese people free sodas and fast food, with the expectation that they would eat themselves to death sooner than otherwise.
Why are people getting fat when we aggressively market high calorie deliciousness and give people little control over their lives?
I think stop doing both of those things.
Lasha is almost certainly obese. Being strong doesn’t mean that you’re “healthy”. Like BMI and health, the correlations are loose. Strength is a better proxy for health than a lower BMI, but neither is perfect. That is, of course, of we assume that the one measure of “health” is longevity.
If you look at the life expectancy for heavyweight sumo wrestlers, for example, it’s significantly shorter than the average Japanese person’s. Lasha is, almost certainly, shrinking his lifespan if he continues to maintain his weight for too long.
I don’t think that would work, practically.
Right now, the West is wealthy enough that many (but certainly not all) poor people are overweight. Some poor people are actually starving, though. If food prices went up, overweight poor people might see weight reduction, but poor people who are already starving could end up like this.
In Canada, Native Canadian children are removed by the children’s aid societies at a high rate.
Or to put it more bluntly, the parent has to choose between paying for food or for adequate housing. They often can’t afford both.
You really don’t think it’s possible that people can enjoy exercise? And I don’t think most people claim it can CURE depression, but it CAN improve it. Note: That doesn’t mean it will help for everyone.
Me, I feel far better in the summer when I’m able to go for long walks in the sun, getting some steps in and playing Pokémon GO than I do in the winter when I’m cold, cooped up inside and 10 lbs heavier. Not everyone feels the same way, and that’s perfectly fine. I’d really resent anyone telling me I’m lying when I say that, however, or when I suggest exercise and a better diet on top of therapy to someone who is feeling depressed or otherwise shitty (obviously not in the case of, say, someone’s parent just died, or other extreme circumstances).
I really enjoy long walks. No other exercise, tho, maybe a little free weights if I have the time.
I didn’t say you were lying about how exercise makes you feel. Just don’t assume that everyone feels that way, which you acknowledge. And it’s a rare article about coping with depression that doesn’t push the whole “get out and get moving” spiel. If exercise were as great for depression as it’s claimed to be, there’d be a whole lot more people doing it.
Stop subsidizing corn. Use that money to subsidize vegetable, legume (not soybeans) and fruit farming.
Make it illegal to provide or vend refined sugar products in schools, or even near them (that would include all the hidden sugar like in peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, bread).
Soda cans must have large warning labels on them, like cigarettes.
Trans fats must be made illegal.
Fast food restaurants must have calories posted beside each offering together with the percentage of an average adult’s caloric requirements it fulfills.
High-calorie snack foods (including breakfast ‘cereals’) sold in supermarkets have to be stocked inside a cage that the clerk must unlock in order to dispense.
Zoning departments must prioritize safe, pleasant pedestrian and bicycle accessibility to shopping and work.
Dedicated community gardening space must be provided in every new development, and every redevelopment plan.
Offices must provide exercise equipment and space, and also the time to use it. Government mandated. People don’t have to use that time to exercise but businesses must provide it.
Notice how all this stuff is about GOVERNMENT? Because that is what it would take. Not “messages”. Laws that regulate how these cumulatively toxic “foods” are dispensed, that create avenues for exercise to happen conveniently, and so forth.
Reasonable, or at least arguably so.
Not reasonable.
Absolutely, for any progress to be made we need to force the issue with the hand of government; myriad studies have shown that human willpower is simply not up to the task, negligible exceptions aside. Though we should probably limit ourselves to things that are reasonable.
About that bolded sentence. The thing is that exercise probably is good for a lot of people with depression, but some depressed people are too depressed to even try it.
Now about the obesity epidemic. I read somewhere, maybe Wikipedia, but I can’t find it, that during the Siege of Leningrad, when people got 200-600 calories a day, if they were lucky, for a period of months, 98% of the population lost weight. Oh, a great number of them starved to death.
I think on the whole I’d rather have fat people, you know? The obese don’t bother me at all.
About the two percent that didn’t, hm. I have questions.
Well, it doesn’t have to be a dichotomy between obesity and starvation.
Plus, if we move towards a single-payer system as some are recommending, the more prevalent obesity is, the higher it’ll drive up everyone’s premiums.
I will go along with these two the day after they ban smoking which kills 50000 Americans a year, 50000 from secondhand smoke. No one dies from second-hand** fat.**
Some of those are already law in CA. They dont seem to work.
Hmm.
Because of the obesity paradox, obesity substantially raises medicare costs. This is both because the obese use more health care, and because, if they make it to old age, they then live longer.
There are five FDA-approved prescription drugs for obesity. None will cause obesity to plummet, but the evidence is pretty strong that Liraglutide, at least, causes substantial decline in obesity comorbidities. Yet private and public drug plans won’t pay for it. So one good message might be to put medical treatment of obesity (which addresses health issues) on the same plane as surgical treatment (that may be more somewhat more directed to cosmetic issues). No, I don’t own drug stocks, and a case could be made for waiting until a drug goes generic.
Lots of good advice given, particularly about the ultra-processed foods not feeling you up, but having you crave more and more. So many are taking the good stuff out, nutrients, fibers, and filling them with them sugars, salts and the wrong kind of fats and who knows what chemicals and preservatives.
In America as soon as we get in our car, in any city, there’s hardly a block that you can drive by without seeing some kind of fast food, restaurant or convenience store to get your favorite, food, drink or snack, you can go in, or drive-thru window, hamburgers, chicken, pizza, sweets, drinks, coffee or colas, and in any commercial area, you’re usually less than one minute away from many choices.
In our homes, we are bombarded with commercials showing us favorite foods on a regular basis. When we go the supermarket, we generally skip the most important isle of fresh produce, fruits and nuts, and head to the boxed and packaged stuff. When we go out, our lives generally center around food all of the time. It’s how couples bond, friends gather to meet over perhaps some sporting event, playing cards or whatever. It’s like we have no other interests to occupy our minds with.
I lost about 12-15 lbs by accident, and it turned out to be a game changer for me. Was never heavy, but just losing that after 25 years of having acid reflux and needing a prescribed medicine, 3 1/2 years later I’m still acid reflux free and still no medicines, eating anything with no problems, but usually healthy food choices, haven’t had a cola in over six years. I got lucky, and hope you can too, but not sure I can be of any help, especially since I’ve never really had a serious weight problem. Maybe you’ll consider someone else who did that lost it without dieting, but doing something fairly basic.
Four important words are eat less, move more. Do at least one, or both. That’s how a physicist did it, and quit cigarette smoking at the same time. He was surprised how easy it was, and still has kept it off. No diets, just those four words, figuring out exactly what calories he was going through in a day, and what was going into his body. Finding out what filled him up, what didn’t.
He was also very curious about where does the fat go when you lose weight. 98% of doctors, nutritionist and health professionals got this answer wrong. Without looking for the answer, did you know? I certainly didn’t. I believe he also has a TED talk.
The causes of obesity are complicated, have many roots in modern culture, and difficult to fight, including that our bodies are designed to hold onto weight in the face of dieting, because your body thinks you are starving. Why would you think that coming up with the perfect “message” is the main problem?
I just read an article that suggests that the rise of dieting culture and the weight loss industry might be one of the primary causes of widespread obesity. And then there’s the modern food industry, which is using cutting edge science to keep people eating the worst food.
I recently came across this article: The healthiest weight could actually be ‘overweight’, a study finds. The article gives some credence to the argument that BMI has some deep flaws. But I wonder what a similar study using waist-to-height ratio would show. I’m guessing the manner of fat distribution matters more than the total amount of fat (up to a certain point, of course).
I don’t know if a single message would do anything. People don’t get fat because they haven’t heard enough about the risks of obesity. They get fat because sugary and fattening food tastes good and is addictive.
So its everybodys/everythings fault except for the individual. Exercise alongside diet will lead to weight loss. Its not easy nor fun but its very simple.
For the individual, it may be simple (if still not easy). But for society? Policies and practices today by society are increasing obesity. It’s reasonable to look at changing some of those policies and practices.
So if it’s so easy why do studies show that the vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back plus more?
You can call it simple like a mathematical equation, but to lose weight you aren’t just applying a mathematical equation, you are fighting your body every step of the way.
Do you really think all the obese people in the world remain obese simply because they haven’t been given the right motivation Or they don’t want it hard enough?
Every moment of every day an obese person gets the message that E is unattractive or assumed to be lazy or stupid, discriminated against socially and professionally. How much more motivation or message do you think is required?
And on top of that, losing weight is not the only thing that people have to deal with on a day to day basis. Life is demanding and stressful. For many people, every moment of that stress makes your body and mind demand food.
Maybe if there were only one obese person in the world you might be excuse for thinking that it’s all down to the moral or motivational failing of that individual but look at the overall picture. By and large, people don’t stop being obese, except for a small proportion of exceptions.
Everyone has to eat every day. The bigger a person you are, the more calories you need to keep going on a day to day basis. Your body and mind fight you every step of the way.
And there are entire economic systems set up to make us want to make bad eating choices. Advertising, the food chemistry Industrial complex.
On top of that studies show that dieting literally makes you stupider. If you work in a creative or mentally taxing job, your body will demand calories to keep your mind in form.
My close friend’s ex-wife even got baryatric surgery, which Is a drastic step to take. Among their acquaintances eight of them had it. Seven of them eventually gained all the weight back. The eighth committed suicide.
Look at movie stars. They spend fortunes or hiring armies of people to keep them in top shape. How may regular people have the time or resources for that?