What message would it take to make obesity rates plummet dramatically?

Great Debates
104

People regain weight because they stop doing what they were doing to lose it.

Nutrition education honestly sucks in the US, and probably isn’t great in most other countries (we’re not the only nation getting fatter, and we aren’t the fattest nation as it is). People aren’t taught how to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way. Rather, you see shit like, “Try the new cabbage soup diet!” or “Do this smoothie diet for 30 days and lose 12 lbs!” Diets that mostly only result in lost water retention, or if you do happen to lose an actual lb or two, you’ll regain it after switching back. People generally don’t understand the concept that you need to KEEP eating less if you want to weigh less. You just teach yourself how to do so gradually. Instead, everyone wants an instant change they don’t have to keep up with.

Hollywood stars have to be in the BEST shape for many of their roles. Society as a whole doesn’t need to be super muscular (I’m not knocking it, but it also isn’t absolutely necessary). I went from 200 lbs to 120 lbs in about 2 and a half years. I didn’t have a dietician, a trainer - hell, I didn’t even go to the gym or otherwise work out. I lost my weight while having the least extra spending money, because I SAVED money not buying so much.

Gaining weight back after bariatric surgery is sadly common. Once more, this is because people return to their previous habits, rather than stick to eating within a healthy calorie allotment.

Gonna need a cite for your claim that being creative requires extra calories, much less an amount that would lead to friggin’ obesity (btw, for reference, being pregnant only requires an increase of about 400 calories a day).

Yes, the TALLER you are, the more calories you need to remain at a healthy weight. If you’re obese, however, you need to cut down on those calories. Saying, “I’m bigger, so I need more!” is a pretty dumb point to make when you’re obviously overeating. The average man needs maybe 2000-2500 calories, so a pretty tall man who is athletic or has a VERY physical job MAY need 3000 or 3200. You don’t need 4k+ calories because you shop the Big ‘n’ Tall section.

A lot of what you’re describing regarding how challenging it is to lose weight isn’t incorrect. Yes, it can be very difficult. Food addiction and binge eating disorders are a real thing. Being obese doesn’t mean you’re a lazy or unmotivated person. None of that means the solution isn’t a simple concept: You burn through weight when you stop giving your body so much unnecessary fuel. It’s insanely simple, yet very difficult to do. You have to hold yourself accountable, something so, so many people struggle with, yet still forgive yourself if you mess up. You have to work hard, without becoming obsessive. I’d 100% recommend people who are working on losing weight to see a dietician if possible, and a therapist for any mental struggles they may have. Also to seek out communities that educate and encourage others to lose weight in a healthy way. r/loseit is one really good example.

105

It is simple. It’s just not easy. It’s like standing on one side of the Grand Canyon and saying that in order to reach the other side you only have to walk a few miles forward. It’s a simple solution that’s incredibly difficult to implement if you intend to do so by walking. When it comes to weight loss, the easy tricks (the equivalent of taking a helicopter across) tend not to work in the long term. So we’re left with having to do it the hard way, and for most people they end up not being successful due to the difficulty of the task.

106

And that happens because your body doesn’t want you to keep doing what you were doing. It is mentally and physically exhausting to continually fight what your body and mind is telling you what it needs and wants. It’s a fight that the vast majority of people are going to lose.

Being creative doesn’t require extra calories. It’s the opposite–being on a diet, that is, consuming calories at a level that would result in weight loss–impairs your mental acuity. What is dieting? It is putting your body in starvation mode, so that it starts consuming stored fat. Your body doesn’t like being in starvation mode. One of the effects of the body going into panic mode thinking its starving is that your mental faculties are impaired. That also means that your ability to make rational decisions are impaired, which, ironically impairs your ability to make decisions that keep you on your diet.

You are overeating in the sense that you are consuming more calories than you need to expend in a day. I’m not talking about how many calories you need to remain alive. I’m talking about how much food your body demands, in the form of hunger and desire–bigger bodies demand more food, regardless of whether that’s in line with calories in/calories out equilibrium.

Recognizing it as a simple concept is of almost no value to actually making it work.

And, relevant to the question asked by the OP, thinking about the “best message” is an essentially useless exercise. It’s not the lack of a message that is the problem.

107

Your body certainly does not want you stuffing it with endless amount of carbs, sugars and unhealthy fats. The life-reducing effects of obesity should really be enough to speak to that.

Sure, limiting what you eat to a healthy amount can be frustrating. I’ve certainly never said otherwise. New habits take about 4-6 weeks to kick in, though, and things absolutely get easier from then on. The problem is that most people don’t keep up healthy eating for that long. Instead they wrestle with drastically low amounts of food and give up within a week or two, because what they are attempting is non-sustainable. Lots of people would be able to lose weight if they understood that slow but steady progress is the only way to succeed.

“Starvation mode” isn’t actually a thing until, y’know, you’re starving. Making yourself live on a heathy 2000 calories a day (if you’re a relatively active average-height woman or slightly less active average height man) is not putting your body through “starvation mode”, regardless of whether you’re used to eating 4000 calories or more than that. Maybe you’ll be a bit crabby because you’re used to eating more sugar, or maybe you’re legit addicted to food, which pretty much guarantees the need for a therapist. But your average person will be just fine cutting back on the calories and eating better foods.

TALLER bodies demand more calories. PHYSICALLY ACTIVE bodies demand more calories. If you’re a 5’4 woman and 300 lbs, the last thing you need is to reassure yourself that you need to consistently eat 3000+ calories a day because you’re big. Why are you big? Gee, probably because you got into the habit of eating 3000+ calories a day! :smack:

I feel like you’re soooooo close to getting this, but fall short right at the end.

Untrue. Being simple doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, but more people would be willing to give it a try if they understood how simple the process really is. Not everyone will succeed the first time they try, but the more you try, the more likely you are to finally get it to stick. The same is true for someone trying to quite any other form of addiction. Except food is often harder because you still have to eat every day.

108

If you’re right, then you could make a killing by making a system, marketing it, and then it would spread like wildfire because of how successful it would be.

That no one has succeeded in this so far makes me suspect that you’re wrong. But if you think you’re right, then you’re leaving millions of dollars on the table by not making this happen.

109

What works, and what is commercially appealing, are two entirely different things.

110

Of course it does. Throughout almost all of human evolution, the danger wasn’t getting too much of carbs, sugars, and fats; it was getting not enough carbs, sugars, and fats. While a healthy system will indeed recognize satiation, so that ‘endless amounts’ won’t come into it – and they don’t for fat people either, very few of us are eating every waking minute – hundreds of millions of years of evolution are indeed telling our systems that carbs, sugars, and fats in general are very good things to eat, and we’d better get them while we’ve got the chance.

Your conscious mind knows the difference between ‘I am losing weight, but this isn’t dangerous because there is and will continue to be plenty of food available’ and ‘I am losing weight and this means I’m in danger of starvation.’ The rest of your system has no way of telling the difference.

111

We should probably first answer the question: “What message would cause activity levels to skyrocket?”. Just like obesity has health risks, so does being sedentary. Engaging in regular exercise provides many health benefits, as well as reversing many of the negative effects of obesity. It’s recommended that people engage in about 180 minutes per week of activity, which could even be simple things like going for a walk. Yet many people won’t even make that minimum amount of effort to better their health. This should be an easier problem to solve since exercise doesn’t have continual urges to fight like diet does.

So then why are most people sedentary? Why are people resistant to even go on a daily 30-minute walk which will provide significant health benefits? Pretty much everyone can understand how hard it is to resist food urges and why people give in to them, but then why can’t people motivate themselves to engage in even minimum levels of exercise? If we can’t get people to commit to the simple task of regular exercise, then it’s unlikely people will be able to follow through with the much harder effort of losing weight.

Along those lines, I feel that creating the structure for regular exercise can help with creating the structure for changing diet. By overcoming that urge to sit on the couch and instead engage in activity, it can help create a pattern of overcoming urges in general. That may help the person deal with other urges, like food cravings when they diet. So I guess the conclusion I have is that the message of increasing exercise would help reduce obesity rates. Even if the exercise itself provides minimal weight loss, the habits it creates will make it easier to follow through with the hard steps it takes to lose weight.

112

You’re not getting something here. Our bodies have these systems that tell us we want food. It’s hunger/appetite/craving. It affects your entire body and your mind. It affects your decision-making ability, your mood, how you feel.

Your body’s systems are not built on a rational analysis of optimum health. Your body doesn’t know that obesity is bad for you. It just wants things.

The use of the word “frustrating” here seems to reflect a misunderstanding of the severity of the response. Your body is designed to hold onto weight and gain weight, not to lose weight. When you are applying the rational calculations of calories to reduce weight, you are fighting your body. That’s at a level far different than “frustrating.”

And why don’t they? The fact that “most people” don’t do it should be a sign that there is something fundamental about the human makeup that is being misunderstood here. Again, the OP’s idea that what is needed is the “right message” utterly fails to understand the fundamental nature of the problem.

If people would be “just fine” doing this, you wouldn’t see most people failing to do this.

And I feel like you’re not getting this at all. The very fact that so few people apply this simple formula successfully should show you that your approach is inadequate.

People get this message every single freaking day. Being told it’s simple over and over again actually makes it harder to do.

And because your body is constantly telling you it wants to eat things. And those wants have no relation to necessary calorie calculations.

113

But - this message has existed for decades and decades. It’s been featured on countless signs, put on numerous websites, the subject of countless publications. You could put a sign “increased exercise reduces fat” every 500 feet in America and it likely would not change the obesity rate substantially at all.

114

Anything that “works” for millions would be commercially appealing. If there was a method that average people, with average abilities and average willpower, could be successful with, to lose unwanted weight and maintain this desired weight, then it would be massively “commercially appealing”.

115

I totally agree. I’m not sure what the message should be which would drastically change activity levels. But if we can’t even figure out the message for the simpler problem of increasing exercise, solving the more complex problem of diet is even more unlikely. So rather than starting with solving the hard problem of diet, let’s start with the easier problem of increasing exercise.

116

Actually, let’s start from the point that the problem is not fundamentally a messaging problem. If you really want to be effective, you have to look at the big picture.

And the big picture is that America has an obesity problem in large part because the structure of society, transportation, work, infrastructure, food production, industry, advertising, technology, etc., are all pushing people in a direction that leads to obesity.

You can’t solve a public health problem like obesity by targeting only the individual people who are obese. You have to remake the entire society. Because it was a remaking of society that caused the problem in the first place.

117

It’s been mentioned repeatedly at this point, but the assumption that a simple message is sufficient is flawed.

Try a different question: What message would it take to make kids stop having sex before turning 18 (or whatever age)?

If you believe such a message even exists or is effective, you are starting from several false premises.

118

Of course your body knows obesity is bad for it - yet again, this is why obesity leads to so many life-shortening conditions. This is how your body tells you, “Hey, something is NOT right.” I’m really not sure how to explain it in any more simple terms than that. Your body doesn’t WANT anything, because your body is a meat-filled skin suit. You yourself decide what you’re putting into it, and it makes due as much as possible, whether it grows to be obese due to calorie over-consumption, or it dwindles down into skin and bones due to under-consumption. But you really can’t, with an ounce of rationality, argue with me that obesity does not lead to an increase in health problems, OR that people are incapable of making rational decisions concerning what they eat. People are very much capable; there is even an organization of people who have lost weight and kept it off to prove it. What it comes down to is whether or not someone has the determination/motivation and education to make a lifestyle change. Right now, a lot of people lack one or the other, or both.

119

Commercially appealing is, “Do this super easy little thing and get your ideal body in 3 months!” Not, “Eat less, move more, and gradually lose weight over 1-3 years. Oh yeah, and deal with the frustration and even possible pain of loose skin.”

People don’t want to listen to advice on how to handle a complete lifestyle change because I feel most of them, deep inside, know that’s the most for-sure way to do it. They want a magic button that lets them lose weight and keep eating every junky thing they can.

120

The obesity rate has gone up in recent decades. It seems highly unlikely to me that what’s changed is Americans’ “determination/motivation and education to make a lifestyle change”, rather than the structure of our society. If it is the structure of our society that has driven this increased obesity rate, then only changing the structure of society will fix it. There’s no way to change human beings’ average levels of determination and motivation to make a lifestyle change.

Or are you arguing that it’s not society that’s changed, but rather Americans’ determination and motivation?

121

If you had a method, even if it took 1-3 years, that most humans with average levels of ability and willpower statistically would stick to successfully, you could make millions. Even if only 1% of obese people took you up on it, that’d be more than enough to retire young.

It seems you believe that human willpower has changed. That strikes me as much, much less likely than that society has changed such that, on average, people consume more and burn fewer calories.

122

Humans aren’t robots. “Do this for 3 years and you’ll lose weight and keep it off” isn’t realistic for most humans, because most humans can’t “do this” for 3 years. Some can, and great for them, but they’re outliers.

Some people can remain totally celibate. Most people can’t. And for the same reason – we aren’t robots. We have drives and urges that very often can’t be overcome.

123

No, it probably wouldn’t. And actually increasing exercise might not reduce fat, either – at least in the sense of making people who are already fat become thin enough to satisfy the current cultural perception of “thin enough”.

Lots of messages to the effect that ‘exercise feels good’ and ‘exercise is fun’ might do a lot more good – especially if they were combined with visuals showing people of various sizes and shapes having fun. Of course, if the exercise being promoted is ‘pay money to join the gym and do calesthenics or work out on machinery in a competitive fashion’, a lot of people aren’t going to want to do that either.

Lots of happy people of various ages and sizes doing things involving swimming, running around, walking around, being able to get out of their cubicles and play outside – promoted as play, and not as either work or competition? We have to carefully train ourselves out of wanting to do this. Didn’t you ever see little kids run around in circles for the sheer joy of it?

People who’d already gotten fat would, most of them, still stay fat; though in some cases somewhat less so than they would have been. But most people would be healthier. And most of them would feel better, and find it easier to move around.

But if we keep promoting exercise as “this is horribly hard work that you Must Do and you should be trying to do it Better Than Other People and the whole idea is that it will make you thin” – no, that’s not gonna work. Why would it? The first of those makes it sound physically unpleasant; the second, except for that handful of people who are likely to win the competition, is emotionally unpleasant; and the third one is a lie.