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Old 07-03-2014, 01:18 PM
 
Location: SoCal again
20,707 posts, read 19,880,600 times
Reputation: 43041

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Quote:
Originally Posted by zenapple View Post
Also, this might already have been touched on, but when your thyroid is out of whack, you often feel EXHAUSTED, depressed, and in pain. That doesn't exactly make you want to hop up off the couch and run a marathon. Kudos to those who persevere, but it's not easy.
yes, that is so true. I pack my surf board onto my car and when finished (15 minute task), i want to take a nap or at least cut off my hurting arms instead of going surfing.

But you can learn to live with it and be active anyways. I trick myself and put the surfboard on in the evening before. So I get up in the mornings and can go right away.

I am exhausted when I come home from work. Take a nap and then go to the gym.

You CAN be fit and you CAN stay in shape with thyroid issues. It just takes more effort IMO. I refuse to let my thyroid ruin my complete life.

 
Old 07-03-2014, 01:24 PM
 
7,300 posts, read 6,718,038 times
Reputation: 2916
Quote:
Originally Posted by ebbe View Post
Some muscle loss is inevitable due to age . You can try reduce it but it will happen to everyone who ages. You start this downward spiral in your 30s and really take a dip after age 75. See what you have to look forward to?
It's true, but here's the problem. People don't want to hear that because in the U.S. there's a cult of youth, and everyone is encouraged to keep being 20, which is why plastic surgery is on the increase.

There's being as healthy as a person can be, and then there's pretending that old age doesn't happen, and that old age doesn't involve deterioration of the body. You say that to some people and they can't stand it. My first husband was like that. Talk to him about the normal changes of aging, and he gets very angry and actually says he doesn't want to hear it. It depresses him to no end to face reality.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 01:24 PM
 
3,971 posts, read 4,020,670 times
Reputation: 5401
Quote:
Originally Posted by kgordeeva View Post
That's a really negative way of looking at life. I've seen plenty of older people who are fit and toned, so age should never be an excuse.
It's just a fact of life.

No excuses, just the way it is.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 01:46 PM
 
Location: State of Transition
102,126 posts, read 107,381,087 times
Reputation: 115947
Quote:
Originally Posted by beera View Post
I think the problem is people are really uneducated about food. I have a few overweight friends who say they eat "hardly anything" but then they post pictures of themselves on weekends eating all sorts of junk and drinking.
This is a good point. People don't seem to count all the calories in alcohol. You can't expect to lose weight if alcohol is part of your daily diet. It's no different than consuming sweets.

Thyroid disease is, indeed, common, and it predominantly affects women. And it's underdiagnosed, not overdiagnosed. Even so, it only accounts for a minority of obesity cases in the US. And it doesn't necessarily doom someone to obesity. I've had thyroid disease all my life, most of the time unmedicated, and haven't been obese, or overweight. Every case is different, though.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 04:44 PM
 
Location: Philaburbia
41,885 posts, read 74,952,198 times
Reputation: 66814
Quote:
Originally Posted by kgordeeva View Post
That's a really negative way of looking at life. I've seen plenty of older people who are fit and toned, so age should never be an excuse.
Of course, but their muscle mass is nowhere near what it was when they were even 10 years younger. It is, indeed, a fact of life.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 05:49 PM
 
436 posts, read 419,605 times
Reputation: 659
re: the Walmart comment - when I end up going there, I not only see a lot of heavy people, but also a lot of sick people, carrying around oxygen tanks, hobbling on prosthetic legs, missing teeth... there are ALL sorts of health issues people have. Often it's a vicious circle. People have health issues, can't get forward in life because they're focusing on health, then they make bad choices (like smoking or bad eating) which then gives them worse health, and on it goes. Walmart is a perfect example of that.

Also, the TYPICAL (stereotypical?) Walmart shopper isn't able to afford health food. Mine barely carries any "healthy" food except for some sad non-organic produce, factory farmed meat, dried beans and rice and a few generic dairy products. But they have aisles and aisles of candy, soda, chips, processed crud, ice cream... You can dig for the one or two brands of non-sweetened cereal hidden away somewhere, but the majority of the aisle is taken up by bright, shiny, CHEAPER sweet sugary cereals... etc.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 06:20 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles area
14,017 posts, read 20,869,471 times
Reputation: 32530
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowfax View Post

But I don't owe you or anyone a explanation as to why I am 100 pounds over weight. My question to the OP is this. Why is it any concern of yours why other people have weight problems? It isn't your body it isn't your problem ad your insensitive comments don't encourage those who want to loose weight. Negative reinforcement does not work with either animals or people. You are just heaping more bad feelings on someone who probably already has enough of their own. No fat person needs a friend like you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stan4 View Post
Not a proponent of the fatties, but they have ZERO responsibility for explaining themselves to you.

Once the thyroid is blown, even on meds, weight loss is still much more difficult.

But they require no explanation.
On an individual level I agree that no one owes an explanation to others. However, that is a poor reason for bashing threads which seek to discuss the issue of obesity in our society. Obesity is an enormous problem in today's society in the United States. It affects us all, whether we are overweight or not, because it affects medical costs and hence the medical insurance rates for all of us.

Widespread obesity (no pun intended) is a sign of something seriously amiss in society as a whole. It goes against the conceptual paradigm of the continuous "improvement" of our species which was actually justified and legitimate in the 19th and first three-quarters of the 20th centuries. Airplanes flew faster and faster. Manned space travel became a reality. Medical science brought us amazing advances such as open-heart surgery and actual complete victory over a few infectious diseases (smallpox and polio). Longevity continued to climb due to a number of factors including better sanitation, medical advances, and declining smoking rates after about 1965 or so.

But now, many things are getting worse, not better and many medical epidemiologists fear a reversal of the gains in longevity; the main reason for that fear is obesity.

As a society we have a desperate need to hold a conversation about the general subject of obesity, of which this thread topic is one aspect.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 06:23 PM
 
Location: North Texas
24,561 posts, read 40,186,320 times
Reputation: 28548
Quote:
Originally Posted by English Dave View Post
I am 60 years old, and live in England. We have a growing obesity problem here. When I was young, most everybody was slim. Not all, but most young people for sure. Now, everywhere I look, I see overweight young folks.

People make excuses for being fat. For most, it's simple. They eat too much, especially fattening foods. Plus of course, folks ride everywhere in their cars, and don't get enough exercise.

I travel to many different countries. In America I see a lot of fat people. In Tunisia, I see a lot of slim people. It's the food we eat ......... simple as that. Too much pizza, too many burgers, too much sody pop. Just too much junk food.
Agreed. I GAINED weight living in England. I'm now slim and healthy back in the US, but that is only because I have developed incredible willpower and work out five days a week. I don't have cheat days. I just don't eat crap...ever. (And yes, it can be incredibly difficult sometimes.)

Everywhere you go, there is food. Fast food, food trucks, convenience stores packed with junk food, restaurants with menus featuring page after page of gut-busting calorie bombs, offices with candy bowls/boxes of donuts/vending machines packed with junk food. On TV, you are constantly shown food porn and we have entire networks devoted to it. You can't get away from it in magazines or on the radio either. You either succumb to the temptation or you tune it out.

I don't know exactly why Western society is so fat. I know why I MYSELF was fat: I ate too much and did not exercise enough. Losing the weight for me was simple and relatively easy: I ate less and exercised more. I'm not going to say that my strategy will work for everyone, though I bet it would work for most people if they worked hard at it. Some people do have crappy genes, and I include myself in that category. I simply cannot eat fattening food unless I want to pay for it on the scale or the fitting room. I have a strong tendency to put on weight easily.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 06:37 PM
 
708 posts, read 821,473 times
Reputation: 1406
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnesthesiaMD View Post
It's not like the thyroid gland is some big mystery, and it is not ambiguous. A simple blood test can tell you if you have an underactive, overactive, or normal thyroid, and the protocol is very specific.

According to this site

Quote:
Hypothyroidism, an underactive thyroid, is one of the most undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and unrecognized health problems in the world.
I also know some people who have had thyroid tests and been given the all clear yet they exhibit classic symptoms of underactive thyroid. Some people I know had their symptoms vanish after increasing the Iodine content in their diets. Having said that, I have no idea how many obese people are suffering from such problems.

The site gives the top 5 reasons but I believe this one to be the main problem.


Quote:
1. Reliance on TSH

According to mainstream medicine, TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) is the gold standard for the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid dysfunction. This hormone released by the pituitary gland in the brain stimulates the butterfly-shaped thyroid gland in our necks to produce thyroid hormones. Unfortunately TSH alone does not provide a complete picture. Most doctors typically don’t run a full thyroid blood panel nor do they investigate fully the patient’s medical history, symptoms, family history and thorough physical exam. They rely on this one blood test, TSH, leaving millions of people undiagnosed and suffering from debilitating symptoms.

Many patients complain to their doctors of common hypothyroid symptoms yet because their TSH falls in the ‘normal’ range, their thyroid is declared normal. Patients will walk into their doctors’ offices complaining of fatigue, weight gain, and depression, and their doctors will pass them prescriptions for sleeping pills and anti-depressants and tell them to just exercise more, instead of recognizing the underlying thyroid issue.
 
Old 07-03-2014, 07:18 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles area
14,017 posts, read 20,869,471 times
Reputation: 32530
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81 View Post
This thread isn't one of them; any thread with a biased title such as this does not seek to discuss the issue rationally or seriously.
I agree that the thread title is poorly drafted. The word "always" should have been replaced by "often", for one thing. Yet the thread addresses the issue of denial among the overweight, which is a legitimate issue since many overweight people claim it's their "genes" or their "thyroid" when in fact it's their horrible dietary and (non) exercise habits. That constitutes an abdication of responsibility.

Now I understand that people who DO have a legitimate thyroid issue are going to be offended, and I don't blame them. More's the pity that the original post didn't include a disclaimer acknowledging that the complaint doesn't apply to all overweight people.

It's difficult to imagine a topic as inherently polarizing as the topic of obesity. Maybe male-female relationships is just as bad, and maybe certain aspects of politics and religion.
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