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I'm seeing a lot of "reasons" given for obesity here, but the real reason is simply that people like eating. It's fun, and it tastes good. You can blame whatever/whoever you want, such as food manufacturers, buffets, sedentary jobs, driving more and walking less, eating while watching TV, etc., but if you put all that food in your mouth, it's your fault and yours alone. People don't want to think about the consequence of bad food choices; they simply want to eat whatever they want.
Self-discipline and thinking are the cures to obesity, and that's too much to ask for many people.
Sure there is a ton of bad food out there. There are advertisers that make food pornographic. Bad food is cheap. Cars and computers make are lives more sedentary. Carbs are evil.
Why is it when we see skinny people who eat a lot and poorly we say they must have a fast metabolism, see a person who is heavy and dieting, they are doing it wrong, cheating or just not trying?
I guess because if you really DON'T eat, you WILL lose weight; I'm always amazed that those people on "that show" invariably do when and if they actually adhere to the 600-800/day diet, however unsustainable that is.
And we all know people who eat enough (junk) food for ten people and never gain an ounce, so that's valid...
Our food in America is pretty bad. Go figure that you can get a burger for a dollar yet a salad will cost 5 bucks. Too many nowadays in a rush they opt for the cheaper burger. Also so many lazy people nowadays as well. Take for instance mowing your lawn. How many do it themselves versus hiring a landscaping service?
I prep my own food, it takes time but I know what my body is ingesting.
Bolded. Not only that, I see some folks in my neighborhood with tractor lawn mowers. So basically after sitting on the couch, they go out and sit mowing instead of using a push mower to burn some calories.
I notice at the gym, some people have the intent to exercise but at too caught with the cell phone watching shows and texting. They walk so slowly on the treadmill, it is self sabotaging.
Last edited by Rastafellow; 08-27-2018 at 01:44 PM..
Reason: add text
That's some pretty mild balls out activity. Median marathon time is more around 575 calories an hour, and marathons aren't a balls out activity. Anyone that can run the US median marathon time of 4:22 can go a lot harder for an hour than than they can for four hours. Median 10K pace, a less elite pool than marathon runners, is 8:50 mile pace. Median marathon pace is 10:00 mile.
That's not the point of insulin. The point of insulin is to control blood sugar.
It's not just carbs. Protein is also highly insulinogenic. The thing that isn't is fat, but that's just because fat can pass so easily in and out of cells. Excess protein is simply converted to either fat or glucose where it ultimately ends up in the same place any other excess macro nutrient ends up. Fat.
Americans do not have declining meat consumption. We eat more meat than ever. What we have declining consumption of is red meat, beef and pork. That decline in red meat has been far more than exceeded by increasing consumption of other types of meat, mostly chicken. The only period that wasn't true was the "great recession." It's all economics. The reason we eat less beef and pork is beef and pork are expensive. Chicken is cheaper so we eat more of that. It's the same reason we, briefly, ate less meat during the recession. The food pyramid is not that problem. The problem is we eat too much food and eat too much of the top of the pyramid, junk food. That doesn't have anything to do with obesity but it's not healthy. Obesity is simply a result of eating too much.
The only thing sort of true is that it's very difficult to out run your fork. The fork side of the equations is always going to be the more important one for weight loss than exercise as it's a lot harder to run a marathon than eat the 2,200 - 3,000 or so calories you might burn if you ran one.
Chicken and poultry in general has also been touted as being more "healthy" than red meats in general.
The problem is that nearly all chicken/poultry in the supermarket is factory-farmed (higher percentage than even pork/beef). Factory-farmed chicken meat contains mostly FAT, not protein! Which is not really surprising, considering that millions of the animals are crammed into such tight enclosures that they don't get the space to move around and exercise.
There are so many factors it is mind boggling. Stress is one (the state of the union, work, loss). Estrogen in meat is another.
Our livestock is fed estrogen (gain weight) and injected with antibiotics (super bug). When we eat them we eat what they ate. If they are treated inhumanely the flesh becomes spiritually toxic for human consumption.
Livestock is also packed so tightly on these factory farms that they do not get to move around much (or at all), so they get more fat as well.
They are also given feed that is often not their natural diet.
Candy (with the wrapper still on) is given to cows lmao
Last edited by Lycanmaster; 08-27-2018 at 02:24 PM..
I was just watching the most recent episode of Live PD and an officer stops some kids walking to the store alongside a busy highway, says they're babies and much too young to be walking to the store. I thought about that a second. One of the kids was 10. When I was 10, we lived on a busy divided highway. And I walked the mile up and back to the convenience store all the time, even when I was younger than that. We all did.
We had no sidewalks, but it never occurred to anyone that a child as old as 10 didn't have the sense to stay out of the busy road. As a matter of fact, I crossed that highway every time I wanted to go into the corn field across the street to play or to walk to the school to play on the playground.
As long as we raise kids that can't go out of sight of their parents and get some exercise, we'll be raising future obese adults.
"People didn't primarily have active occupations then anymore than now."
But look at all the labor-saving devices we have now that we didn't have then. I remember my mother, a homemaker, never sitting down all day just to keep the house running!
But now those same women work, so it's not like they are sitting down all day. I was born in 1962, we moved in with my grandparents in 1967, and even then my grandparents had a washer and dryer and a dishwasher. It wasn't like they were taking clothes to the stream to wash.
We are more sedentary though, entertainment used to be go out and do something, now it's play video games. I don't think activity levels can account for the great degree of morbid obesity though. I do think food additives probably have more to do with it than people might think.
I think a lot of it is we somehow equated eating massive portions with being macho and American...look at that stupid Arby's commercial "We have the meats" said in the deepest and most manly voice you could imagine. We show hot dog eating contests on ESPN for goodness' sakes.
I was just watching the most recent episode of Live PD and an officer stops some kids walking to the store alongside a busy highway, says they're babies and much too young to be walking to the store. I thought about that a second. One of the kids was 10. When I was 10, we lived on a busy divided highway. And I walked the mile up and back to the convenience store all the time, even when I was younger than that. We all did.
We had no sidewalks, but it never occurred to anyone that a child as old as 10 didn't have the sense to stay out of the busy road. As a matter of fact, I crossed that highway every time I wanted to go into the corn field across the street to play or to walk to the school to play on the playground.
As long as we raise kids that can't go out of sight of their parents and get some exercise, we'll be raising future obese adults.
I don't know how we could raise them differently now, because now you get in trouble letting your 10 year old walk to the store. A few months ago there was a story on the forum about a mom who got arrested and had the kids yanked because she let her 10 year take the 6 year old to the playground a couple of blocks from the house. Many people on the forums thought the mother was an idiot for letting them go by themselves!
"Finish everything on your plate" is a remnant from the days when people sat down at tables with their families three times a day for meals of healthy real food and THAT WAS ALL THEY ATE ALL DAY (the rest of the day they were engaged in physical labor or play). Now I can confidently say that most people I know don't eat meals at tables with family, but just eat constantly; again, usually while driving or riding in a car going somewhere or while mindlessly staring at a screen of some sort. "Big" difference!
It was also a remnant from the great depression when it was hard for people to afford basic food on a consistent basis.
I don't know how we could raise them differently now, because now you get in trouble letting your 10 year old walk to the store. A few months ago there was a story on the forum about a mom who got arrested and had the kids yanked because she let her 10 year take the 6 year old to the playground a couple of blocks from the house. Many people on the forums thought the mother was an idiot for letting them go by themselves!
My Mom used to send me a half mile to the store for her cigarettes when I was 6.
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