Obesity

I used to think that as well. That statement would apply to me as well, except there is more than one 'effect' of fatty food. Whilst I have not put on any weight as a result of a fatty diet, a recent blood test revealed that I had dangerously high levels of cholesterol. This has subsequently come down after adopting a better diet but my point would be that sometimes skinny people are at even more risk of health problems from fatty food due to a feeling of invulnerability.

 

I am a sailor by trade and I spent three months down in South America and came back home to Newfoundland, Canada. I could not believe how fat people were at home when all I saw was South Americans for three months. Sure poverty prevails down there, maybe they are smaller genetically and the heat makes you sweat it off, but I think it says something about the excess of us North Americans. Frankly, I was disgusted and it was quite the inspiration to stay fit and trim.

 

Just wait until you reach the age of 30 then. It's all downhill from there, just you go and ask Splunge...

On topic: It's not only Fast Food, I think. Unhealthy stuff (like meat in general) is way too cheap. And people tend to think that a meal without meat and fat is not ample to still hunger. In fact, it is no coincidence that we call essentials like vegetables "side dishes"...

 

Actually vegetarians are some of the fattest people I know. When I was a child I wondered how my neighbour was obese as he was a vegetarian - I imagined him eating raw vegtables all day but then I later discovered that 'Snickers' and other confectionaries were counted as 'vegetarian'!

 

Yeah, vegetarianism is no sure solution. Some of the worst foods that I have to avoid to keep my cholesterol down are cheese, eggs, butter, cream, full-fat milk, and ice cream - all of which can be eaten my most normal vegetarians.

 

LOL

One of the groups in our lab is trying to figure out this exact thing. They think some people carry a protein (or a family of them) that burns any excess calories that aren't used (rather than store as fat). There are many other genes they are working on, the main one being leptin. Bit of a hot topic at the moment.

 

Ha, look at you guys going on about how evil vegetarianism is after I mentioned that most people today devour to much meat.

According to your definiton a vegetarian diet is about snickers, cheese, eggs, butter and cream.

It's a bit like saying that smoking isn't bad for your health because you know of a guy who died aged 20 without being a smoker at all.

 

Lol at Darkthrone. What I ment to say (and forgot to write) is that even vegetarians are not immune to todays lifestyle.

To go off topic - fish is not vegetarian no matter what you all think!

And to generalize - Omnivours devour too much fatty meat, and Herbivores devour too much cream and snickers. Just joking.

 

quote:

Unhealthy stuff (like meat in general)

I hardly think meat is unhealthy. Fish, chicken and red meat are essential to anyone who wants to develop any muscle, endurance and strength in a fitness program. If you eat only vegetables you are not eating a balanced diet just like primary meat eaters who do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. Meat does not go hand in hand with fat. Boil skinless chicken breasts, eat unbattered fish and have the occasional steak along with a fitness program and you will be a lot healthier than a vegetarian who sits home and does nothing.

 

Of course. And someone alive will be a lot healthier than a corpse who sits home and does nothing.

j/k

Meat is an essential component of every diet, sure enough. I was referring to the very fact that the diet is not balanced anymore today. Too much meat. Too much fatty meat. Too much saturated, animal-based fats.

An excerpt from

http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/obesity/en/

It just won't do to justify your heavy meat consumption with the notion that you wouldn't get anything done if you lived on raw beans.

Apart from that, steak is our friend, of course!

 

Personally, I think an equally large contributor to modern weight problems is PORTION CONTROL. Just because a food is healthy doesn't mean that you can eat unlimited quantities of it and suffer no ill effects. And when it comes to snack foods... remember that that pint of Ben and Jerry's you're about to devour is supposed to serve FOUR.

 

That reminds me ofa guote in 'Fat Fighters' from Little Britain:

"...and because its half the fat, you can eat twice as much!"

 

@Tassadar:

How about their reaction to carbohydrates? I mean, are there any clues pointing towards some relation between the way people react to fat and the way they react to carbohydrates? Maybe if they are extremely tolerant of fat, carbohydrates don't do them good and they other way round? This is how some diets work, so maybe this could be the case in nature, as well.

As for men and bellies, the problem is that for men fat tends to go in the belly. Sometimes you have arms and legs like sticks but your belly is still not exactly flat. This happens to me after Easter or Christmas. Women get it more evenly distributed between belly, hips and thighs. It's not visually superior in large quantities, but easier to "hide" a pound or five or even ten of excess weight.

 

Hey, Chev.

Funny you should ask that, the girl I work with is starting her PhD later this year and will be looking at different diets in rats. From what I already know, carbs are the preferred source of fuel for the body and gets burnt first. Body fat is a last-resort fuel, which means you not only have to excercise, you'd have to overdo it to burn enough fat. If there is an excess of CHO intake, this stimulates de novo lipogenesis. As CHO stimulates hunger, they could just be as bad for you as fat if you overeat. The Atkins diet works because fat and protein has the opposite effect and decreases hunger, if there is no, or little CHO intake.

Did that make any sense?

 

Okay, I thought I would put in my 20 pounds worth, as an obese person.

I was a normal sized person up until 5th grade. In the summer between 5th and 6th grade I put on enough weight so that kids said, "Scotty, you got fat!" at the beginning of school.

Despite my mother's best efforts to get me to diet and exercise, I gradually kept gaining weight.

I am 5 foot 9 inches, about 180 cm tall. Entering college I weighed 200 lbs / 90 kgs. After four years of beer and pizza I weighed 220 lbs / 100 kgs. When I got married in 1994 I weighed 225 lbs / 102 kg. Last year I got up to 256 lbs / 116 kg, and now I am at 245 lbs / 111 kg.

I've gone through many diet and exercise programs, mainly Weight Watchers. I'll have some success, sometimes losing 10 to 20 lbs, but usually after a month or two I'll lose interest and motivation and regain it all, plus maybe a little bit more. This is classic behavior for unsuccessfull dieters.

I have no one to blame but myself.

I don't have any medical conditions that contribute to my obesity.

Here are a few factors that have contributed:

1. I am not very active. I would much rather play D+D, live or computer, or read than exercise. I do like to swim and walk my dog, walking on my treadmill while watching a video isn't bad, but I hate running.

2. I truly love food and drink. If I wanted to I could blame it on my parents who divorced when I was four, so maybe I took solace where I could find it, in food. However, I realize that that is a totally lame excuse for a 36 year old man to use. When it comes to fine food and drink, I really do enjoy eating, and it is very easy to eat way too much. Some other things that didn't help were working for 3 years at the university's bakery and kitchen, while I took advantage of tuition remission for my wife and me. Let me tell you, their pastry chef made some really good doughnuts and cookies. It also doesn't help that my wife is French, so we go visit her family in France about once a year. All of her cousins and friends just can't wait to invite us over and show off their best culinary delights and vintages. As you can imagine, I REALLY enjoy our trips to France, but can easily put on 5 to 10 lbs per trip.

3. American culture has enabled fat people. My grandmother was fat in the 50s, and my mom tells me that she was embarrassed because of it. I imagine that some kids today are embarrassed of their fat parents, but I bet many aren't.

This is kind of like the sex/puritan paradox, where sex is everywhere in American life and culture, but puritanical values scandalize anyone who partakes of it, a la Clinton.

In our desire to be accepting of all people and not make anyone feel bad about who they are, whether it be black, white, Christian, Jew, rich, poor, skinny or fat, we have made it okay to be obese. Oh, I know that there is still a massive amount of culturaly pressure, especially for girls and women, to be skinny, leading to all sorts of things such as anorexia/bulemia, but there are probably many overweight kids who are never told, "You're too fat" by either their parents, and certainly not by their teachers.

I have a few overweight students in my class, and I would feel horrible about telling them, "You're obese."

Our society, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Department of Education, is increasingly aware of the problem, and schools are taking action to increase awareness, provide more physical education, healthier lunch choices, etc.

4. The tenets of capitalism have driven portion sizes up tremendously. Who wouldn't want to get 25% more free? Why pay $1.50 for a burger at BurgerKing when you can get a bigger BigMac for less? Restaurants have battled for customers by increasing portion sizes, or simply going the all-you-can-eat route, and we have gobbled it up. At least I did.

5. Humans evolved in an environment of scarcity, with starvation a constant threat. Vitamin rich fruits and berries were only seasonally available, fatty meat was not a sure thing on the menu, and salt, depending upon the distance one lived from the ocean, was a scarce essential nutrient. Thus, most humans evolved to really like eating fatty, sweet, and salty foods, to the point of gorging themselves whenever possible when such food was available. While this was generally good for our hunter/gatherer ancestors to ensure that they built up a store of fat and vitamins for the sure to come lean times of the year, it has lead to the diseases of affluence now that many of us can sedentarily earn enough money to buy all the calories, processed sugar, and fat that we care to eat. I happen to have more of a preference for fatty, salty foods, than for sweets, but you pick your poison.

Let me repeat again, I am NOT blaming any of those things for my obesity, they are just some factors that have contributed to it. The blame lies squarely on my low willpower.

It is also not that I don't understand the dangers of being overweight, or the benefits of not being overweight. I do understand them. In D+D terms I have an adequate intelligence score but a low wisdom score. Although I have never smoked, I have often used this analogy: It's not that smokers don't KNOW that smoking is deadly, it's that they just have a REALLY hard time quitting. I don't know if there have been any studies about it, but it would not surprise me that some people, possibly including me, are in effect addicted to the dopamine rush that eating really good food gives them.

I do want to lose weight, and hopefully this time I really will succeed. It definitely is possible. I am changing my lifestyle and eating better and exercising more. I absolutely hate counting calories, points, grams of fat, etc. but it seems that that is what it takes to really lose. That and motivation.

A couple weeks ago my wife, who by now has been trying almost as long as my mom to get me to lose weight, presented me with an offer I couldn't refuse. For each pound I lose I can play computer games for 1 hour. Although I truly hate it, I know I need the motivation and haven't been successful providing it on my own, so I agreed to her offer.

I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.

 

Brilliant!

But seriously, thanks for sharing those thoughts.

As mentioned earlier, the only issue here outside of personal choice is when the costs of obesity are borne by the taxpayer in a welfare society. If you have to pay for your own triple bypass surgery then you have every right to eat whatever you want. But if the taxpayer is going to pay for it, then that's another issue.

 

Saying all that took guts, Scot. I commend you on your commitment and sacrificing the computer for the greater good.

I agree with your points about the capitalist ethic, too; we're driven to "bigger, cheaper" as an end in itself. I've recently made the conscious decision to eat better foods and only eat when I need to, rather than when I want to. Time will tell on that one; I'm hardly overweight (in fact, I'm in the "average" range at 5'11" and 76kg) but I'm keen to avoid following in my predecessors' footsteps. For me, it's a lifestyle thing, not a genetic thing, which means the emphasis is on what I do and how I live.

Odds are that I'll go after having a stroke. I'd really prefer to avoid that, or at least stave it off as long as possible, and besides, if I can't stay fit when I'm young (25), when can I?

 

I know whats its like as well - my weight has been a problem for me -
I grew up fast, I remember being 15 or 16 years old and being 6ft or so and nearly 17 stone (It helped on the rugby field). I am quite muscular but it was'nt until I hit nearly 20 stone at 17 that I thought it was a problem (this was in partly due to my discovery of alchohol 2 or 3 years earlier). Yes I did get the **** taken out of me at school although I learned to take it in my stride. Obviously being big had it advantages if somebody pushed you too far. I could not really say why I got so big -partly inactiveness, party because I love food, partly drink.
At 17 I saw myself on a video and I could'nt believe how big I really was - I then started a crash diet (the wrong idea) I eventually got down to under 15 stones. This didn't last - I met my future wife at 19 years old - and over the next few years the pounds piled back on until I reached about 21 stones or more. This was due to the comfort factor (being in a settled relationship), and my job (sitting on my arse all day) - as well as the reasons listed above.
Over the last couple of years I have tried again to loose weight slowly - but to try and change my lifestyle as well. I remember loosing weight before - I distinctly remember being unhappy after I'd done it but this was probably because of the manner in which I lost it. This time I'm taking it slow - I've lost nearly 4 stone in about 2 and half years. So I'm over half way to getting down to an ideal weight for me - only about 3 stone to go.
I'm happy at the moment - I play football and a few other sports - I've never really had health problems. I am trying to invest in my future now I've past 30.
The funny thing is I've never really thought of my self as fat - even though at points I clearly have been obese.