I’ve posted my pic many times for my fellow dopers to see. Where’s yours?
Now you’re flirting with me? I’m flattered. My whole point is that fat people are not genetically incapable of becoming thin. Period. If you really wish to see what I look like, we can do this outside of the board. K?
Yes, I’m flirting with you. Nasty and spiteful is exactly how I like a woman to be. Really gets the juices flowing, if ya know what I mean. And a swimmer and biker as well! - how will I contain myself. I may orgasm right here in my chair. :rolleyes:
I just find it rather amusing that because I object to you used a snotty term to refer to larger people, you assume that I’m larger.
As to this:
What is this - the message board version of “Meeting at the bike racks at 3:00PM!” ? Give me a break - if you feel entitled to slag on people based on their body measurements, I suggest you put yours out there for comparison.
I’ve got no dismissive comments to add, but I do agree with several of the “patronizing” males - and I’m female.
Now, my dad’s a lawyer and a workoholic. I remember when my sisters and I were growing up, on weekdays we’d see my dad when we were getting ready for school, and that was it. He’d usually be off at around 9:00 am, and home at 11:00 pm or so. And he did most of his work either sitting behind a desk or driving around. He was raised with very poor eating habits - breakfast was pancakes, bacon, and eggs and dinner was a giant steak with maybe a potato and some watery vegetables. With his work schedule later in life, he’d usually skip breakfast, eat fast food for lunch, and eat whatever leftovers were in the fridge when he got home late at night. Not suprisingly, by the time I was in high school, he was overweight. Not drastically, but he’s short like the rest of the family, so it stood out more. He’s never been a “gym” person, but he took up biking, something he enjoyed. He started eating some of my “weird hippie food”, like low-fat Indian curries and veggie-based dishes. He quit drinking beer. He made an effort to eat on a regular schedule. I remain very impressed with him for realising he would never go the gym, and finding an alternate excercise plan. For changing a lifetime of bad eating habits. For not making a million excuses. Now, he’s probably the healthiest fifty-something man I know, and I have a positive role model for that.
I compare that to many of my overweight schoolmates and coworkers. People who constantly complain that they can’t lose weight, even though they go to the gym and eat right. Well, apparently “going to the gym” means paying for a membership, but actually being at the gym for a half hour every two weeks, and eating right means skipping breakfast, a Subway sandwich for lunch, and a big dinner to make up for skipping the first meal and having an unsatisfying second. Yes, it is hard to make time for excercise, but only if you don’t really want to do it. I could have just returned from a half-hour run if I hadn’t been sitting here, reading the SDMB for the past little while.
So, unfortunately, I do tend to side with the “patronizing” posters, because my experiences with overweight people have fallen into categories like:
- overweight people who decide to make a change, stick to it, and lose weight
vs. - overweight people who honestly do want to lose weight, but can’t (for whatever reasons) make those changes, so stay the same size.
Again, those opinions are based on my experiences, and because of that I don’t make judgements like “fatties who don’t lose weight don’t want to lose weight”. It’s hard for lots of people to lose weight, or even maintain their current weight. I don’t eat a lot of unhealthy food, but if I didn’t excercise as often as I do I know I’d gain weight. I slacked off a bit this summer, and packed on seven pounds pretty quickly. Some days I think it’d be a lot easier to go buy a whole new wardrobe than worry about seven stupid pounds, especially starting up school again and not having much free time, but I know that it’d eventually turn into not caring about 15 pounds, or 20 pounds, or 50 pounds. So I am working out more and eating less, and I haven’t seen any results yet, but I’m not giving up.
Sorry, that was a crazy-big hijack, my main point was that it’s not only males who feel this way about overweight people, and I do agree with **malacandra ** on this point:
Yeah, but they CAN lose the weight. You’ll always be an asshole.
I smoke. I also run. People love to come up to me and say, “OMG, how can you be athletic and still smoke??? That’s so bad for you!”
To which I say, “yeah I smoke. Would you rather I smoked and didn’t run, or smoked and run?”
“Well…”
“Shut the hell up.” Yes, I smoke. I also run and eat as healthy as I can to counter-act it.
All you over-eaters, start running. Run every day. Don’t give me any crap about how it’s impossible in your particular case. Baloney. Just get out there and run. You want to eat an extra 1000 calories? Run off an extra 1000 calories. Earn it.
"Oh, but I have a genetic defect. I have congestive heart failure. I have [insert acronym here].
Bull crap. Valid excuses for overeating and under-exercising are probably in the .001% range. Run. If you can’t run, swim. Can’t swim? Do pushups. Can’t do pushups? Do fucking something! There is absolutely no excuse for not being able to burn off the excess calories you take in. None. You’re just not doing it. That fork you use to get food into your mouth? Replace it with a heavy weight. Start lifting it aerobically until you’ve burned all the excess calories you’re about to take in. Just do it. You’ll have amazing arms.
What works for a few people must work for all people.
What’s possible in small amounts for a short time must be possible in large amounts for a long time.
Feeding is a totally voluntary behavior. Physiological controls cannot exceed willpower.
There is no meaningful genetic variability among humans when it comes to fat acquisition.
Significant environmental influence excludes the possibility of significant genetic influence.
Anyone who questions these statements is making excuses.
Not according to the “wisdom” in this thread, or haven’t you been reading?
It is apparently not possible for a person to lose more than 10% of their fat.
That assertion is such a pathetic attempt to excuse obesity and dodge personal responsibility that it makes me physically ill.
Like wise ol’ Homer would say, people can use statistics to prove their point. The 10% bit doesn’t mean anything on its own. There are way too many variables that cause people to lose only 10% of their fat, but the statistic only shows that they lose that 10% and nothing else (and it doesn’t count exercise, which is just as or even more important than diet).
Yeah, I’d say one counteracts the others, but not in that order. 
Good point. I always suspected running was bad for me. 
It feels bad for me.
RIF. I actually said that the *vast majority of people * seem to be unable to lose more than 10% of their weight *permanently * with diet and exercise and that there are apparently physiological mechanisms to explain that.
Those are just observations - seen in virtually every study ever done. But if you want to puke all over them be my guest. It’s *not * a recommendation for resignation (as I said in about 30 different places). But it does suggest that someone overweight needs to take that into account. (And people that scream “fat people suck!!! bleh!!! biology sucks!!! wwwahh” are just the fucking morons they appear to be).
I personally like the NIH’s recommendations which are to lose the 10% over 6 months, wait for the plateau, and if you want to lose more try to do so only after you’ve managed to maintain the 10% for a while. It has the virtue of acknowledging the biology while leaving open the possibility that biology is not destiny.
Hook, actually when it comes to weight loss, exercise is much less important than diet. And those studies do include diet and exercise programs. Not that you’ve ever bothered to look any up. Or ever will. But I do applaud the general mode of skeptical thought which is pretty much absent in this thread. You’re right that not every permutation of diet and exercise has been tried. There may be effective methods (like the NIH’s recommendations which are lose, wait, then try again). There’s no studies that show those work, but it’s reasonable in that it’s not the old advice and hasn’t yet failed over and over again.
There is also a registry out there of people that have lost more than 30 lbs over a year. The idea is to learn from them if there are some strategies that work better than others.
Hey, hey… ouch. You’re right, I didn’t read the entire report, but did read your conclusions, which centered on the diet. However, I must remain skeptical of any study that suggests diet is more important than exercise, as the two go hand in hand. Sure, you could starve your body to death and achieve that bony thinness that’s so hot among crack addicts, but the truth is that as you exercise more your body will have less of a need for storing fat, your muscles will develop (which means calories will be burned in maintaining them) and your body will have to readjust itself to manage its caloric intake more efficiently. This cannot be achieved without an intelligent diet plan that takes into account the body’s actual needs. Similarly, this diet plan alone won’t be of much help without the exercise as your body is still inactive (in comparison to the exercise) and will decide to store something for later (as in: when you actually do stuff that needs it… or food runs out, whichever comes first).
I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve one’s goals just by doing either one, but the combination of both is so spot-on that disregarding any of the two seems silly to me.
I don’t know if I’d be skeptical, but my experience does back up yours. I found regular physical excercise to be the key lifestyle change. Everything else followed it.
For me, personally, it’s been just the opposite.
(6 days a week hard exercise, marathon and triathlon training) does nothing for my weight. Probably healthier, heart rate and everything. But the weight stays the same or goes up and the clothes don’t get looser. I’m still (as so many in this thread would say) a fatty. A fatty who can run 26.2 miles. But a fatty nonetheless.
However, when I severely restrict calories with no exercise. I lose. Until I stop sustaining it any longer.
But for me, at least, through years of experience, exercise is a much less important than caloric intake, almost to the point of being neglible.
In whose eyes do they have to be valid? Yours? Maybe in the eyes of the person living them they are perfectly valid and in fact overpowering.
Even I forget how it is for me most days, on those rare occasions when I lose weight and follow a reduced food plan. It seems easy that day and I can’t imagine it never feeling like that, and vice versa for days when I’m in the food.
Anit that the truth. I used to run competitively, and occasionally am struck by a strange urge (lightning? mental defect? crazyness?) to run now.
I always hate it.
uglybeech: Thanks for the JCEM link. I should have known about it :o . Much obliged.
Disagree. A good example might be type I diabetics who do not respond to sulfonylureas whereas most type II’s do
Hmmm. OK, I guess that means if you sprint 100 yds in 11 seconds, you can do the 440 in just over 48 seconds.
That must be why starving people eat grass, shoe leather, and garbage.
Tell that to the NIH people who’ve spent years studying the Pima indians (a people with virtually 100% obesity).
Are you serious? Again, look at type I diabetes where the concordance between identical twins is about 30%. How else do you account for that except for a mixed environmental/genetic influence. BTW, IIRC, fraternal twins have a concordance rate of somewhere around 5%, thereby showing that the 30% concordance in type I twins is not just reflecting a shared environment.
I think not - I read that post as being a rather tongue in cheek example of what many people in this thread seem to be suggesting - that is, if you don’t subscribe to the “eat less, exercise more works for every person, every time theory” then you’re deluding yourself.
The surgeon general, the good folks at WedMD and Yahoo! Health seem to agree that obesity is a result of one’s lifestyle. Overconsumption and lack of exercise WILL lead to being overweight. Period. A healthy lifestyle will NOT lead to obesity. Why is this open to debate? Yet someone always seems to find some obscure URL with some quacks telling all the fat people, “It’s not your fault!” when it is. If it makes you feel better at night to lie to yourself and say you could never be thin no matter what you do, go nuts. You’re can’t even fool yourself, let alone anyone else.