Yeah, it's not a particularly good statistic about an individual person's body except as a suuuuuper rough guideline but if everyone's BMI goes up something's happening.
This interesting to me, because I feel like more Americans are working out than ever, but maybe it's just my environment. Naturally, working out usually has second-order effects like watching nutrition.
Jobs that require physical exertion have been disappearing. Even the guys putting in a new water main outside my house didn't seem to be doing much physical work. I didn't see them swinging a pick or using a shovel.
I guess it's bifurcated, like too many other things in our society are becoming.
People are either doing no physical activity, or they're doing triathlons.
People either have multiple degrees, or they didn't finish high-school.
People either buy a house in their early 20s, or they're renting all their lives.
People either read a book a week, or they never read a book at all.
(Obviously there are practically many people in between these extremes and people are free to do whatever they want and many people are happy and successful on both sides of each of these spectrums.)
Exactly this. It is astounding how extreme the difference can be sometimes. You'll be in a major coastal city and it seems like everyone is relatively trim, works out religiously and wouldn't touch a fast food hamburger. Then you go to the midwest or the south and it seems like everyone you see is overweight/obese, subsists on a diet of fast food and smokes cigarettes. I'm shocked just noticing the number of people walking around smoking cigarettes when I get out of East Coast metro areas. I literally don't know anyone where I live who smoked anymore and rarely see anyone smoking on the street.
It's not JUST regional differences though. In 1990, the state with the consistently highest obesity rate, Mississippi, only had 15% of the population obese. Colorado, the leanest state, surpassed that in 2003 with 16% and got up to 23.8% obese in 2019. As of 2019, Mississippi has climbed up to 40.8%. I imagine in a decade or two Colorado will catch up, assuming no systematic changes.
Right, there is definitely a broader change going on but I also don't think looking at state level data really invalidates the urban/rural variance divide. To take Colorado as an example, you see the same sort of divide I mentioned when you go from Boulder/Denver to rural Western Colorado (especially in the southwest in and around the reservations).
You can work out and still be obese. It's all in the diet. On the same subject, bodybuilders don't fit into BMI parameters, so body fat percentage is a lot more accurate to determine obesity, but it's much harder to measure, so for the wide population BMI is used.
That's a good point, though I do think that serious weight lifters are too small of a percentage of the general pop to skew the stats. A lot of them also "dirty bulk" - keep an unhealthy weight while being very strong / muscular.
One aspect of this is that consensus shifts towards obese-normalization despite no health consensus changing or scientific advancement supporting this body form. It's merely rule by mob to accepting this because the mob is overweight and obese.
I doubt it's any sort of deliberate act, just the normalization of people looking bigger and bigger and that becoming "normal". People who were fat a generation ago are now normal because the window has shifted. I don't think that the movements for obesity normalization has had as much of an effect as just seeing larger people around.
> I don't think that the movements for obesity normalization has had as much of an effect as just seeing larger people around.
A distinction that doesn't really matter right?
In one example, I think it's good that clothing websites will show people in their clothes that look like their larger customers. I think it's good that this is less jarring to see due to prevalence alone. There was little utility for the polar opposite at size 0 and size 2 to model for everything, aside from overvaluing the addictiveness of frustration.
It still remains accurate to point out the health issues associated with obesity and the folly of remaining in that state.
I think it does, because it's more insidious than any sort of active movement. Are websites showing plus sized models because they want to be body positive or just because that's who research shows buys their clothing.
> It still remains accurate to point out the health issues associated with obesity and the folly of remaining in that state.
Absolutely - it's a danger, I'm not saying it's not.
My point is that you can change the narrative of a movement much more easily than you can change how a society as a whole unthinkingly deals with something. A deliberate normalization has a voice which can change what it's saying, this phenomena really doesn't.
In that case I do think active movements are having an effect.
I think websites are showing plus sized models because the movements told them "look at your customer analytics instead of assuming the status quo of people imagining they'll look like size 0 models when they wear this"
It is all very interrelated from my perspective.
If I did have an opinion I would say that a more collaborate and holistic approach with a movement's narrative is possible and necessary. For example, if some people to go to the extreme of wanting magazines to make disclaimers that models are photoshopped to help people in all BMI ranges have higher self esteem, then people normalizing unhealthy but common BMI ranges should also have disclaimers about the issues associated with remaining in that state.
There is a growing social consensus that all body types are beautiful and should be celebrated.
This is obviously a very delicate issue. We surely don't want people to be shamed or ashamed for being overweight. Nothing good comes from shame.
But there is serious mortality and morbidity associated with obesity. And as a society, we don't seem to have much of a problem shaming people who fall into other risk categories such as smoking or drug use.
While this may seem harsh at a surface level, are you really sure nothing good comes from shame? Is shame always an unhealthy emotion to experience? It seems to me that it is effective in focusing attention on potential personal misjudgement or misbehavior, and can strengthen resolve to break bad habits or otherwise ensure a better outcome for oneself going forward.
Yes, my experience with CBT very much leads me to believe that shame is a highly destructive emotion, more likely to cause someone to withdraw and disengage from life than to promote lasting positive change in behavior.
This is probably because you were shamed for things that were actually harmless. There is definitely a problem with the level to which shame is used indiscriminately to control people.
But no emotion is inherently destructive. We should feel shame at certain things. If you tripped an old lady and didn’t feel shame, I’d say you were a psychopath, or if you simply threatened to kill anyone who you didn’t like.
It’s also notable that absence of shame is characteristic of psychopathy, and even Buddhist psychology states that an absence of shame is an impediment to enlightenment.
I completely support the idea that excessive or inappropriate shame is a major part of many if not most psychological disorders. Nothing supports the idea that all shame is destructive.
On the topic of obesity, I do agree that shame is unlikely to help. In fact I suspect that shame is more likely to be part of the cause.
Shame/guilt appears to exist in other species too - Many pet dogs for example will act very differently after it's just eaten something it knows it shouldn't have...
For a behaviour trait to exist in species far from each other in the evolutionary tree suggests there is a real survival benefit to having it.
Doesn't mean it is beneficial in all cases, or that it doesn't feel shit though!
Early this year, I attended the funeral of a somebody from the office. She was overweight, and for many years avoided seeing a doctor because she was embarrassed to be so heavy. The bad news was delivered by a heart attack at age 60 or so.
There is no contradiction. You can tell obese people that their condition will cause them various troubles that they wouldn't have otherwise. You don't have to resort to shaming them for that. Beauty is subjective.
> You can tell obese people that their condition will cause them various troubles that they wouldn't have otherwise. You don't have to resort to shaming them for that.
Many people call that shaming. This distinction isn't as clear as you suggest.
The whole stop smoking campaign was based on shame. It's highly addictive, its the only way to make people stop. We need to start heavily shaming. It's a very useful tool in behavior change of the resistant.
I agree that shame can be a powerful tool, but I believe there's ways to have more impact than shaming individuals for being addicted etc. Crazy idea: why don't we shame the people creating addictive products for profit at the cost of their customer's health, instead of their victims? I saw a campaign in Paris last year shaming people who throw away packaging with pictures of stuff that didn't feel like it was necessary packaging in the first place, why not shame the companies that sell unnecessary packaging instead? Poeple who create and maintain these systems are who I think should feel ashamed at least.
Body shaming is not a valid method of making people get in shape, so I don't think there's anything wrong in the acceptance of people with more mass. We do have other ways to encourage people to lose weight though, such as sugar taxes, regulating processed foods' contents, investing in making fresh produce widely available etc. which can make a difference.
People will argue this infringes on their freedom to make unhealthy life choices. I agree, you cannot force someone to make healthy life choices, only use pricing signals to encourage it. Tax them more to recoup the costs, and let them make the choices they would like (unhealthy foods, smoking, etc). I also agree that more regulation is required (States in Mexico intend to ban kids from purchasing junk food because childhood obesity there is skyrocketing [1]).
It is a very effective method. It's common to do in Japan, and they have one of the lowest obesity rates of any first world country. No overbearing government regulations necessary.
Average Japanese diets are much healthier than American diets; there is less of a car culture, public transport is common. But do go on about fat shaming being effective.
That's what I meant. Western European countries rely extensively on public transit and walking, much like Japan. Yet their obesity rate is several times higher than Japan's (though still lower than the USA).
>Body shaming is not a valid method of making people get in shape
Why not? It works. Are you more concerned with someones feelings than their heart health? When they pass at a young age will their loved ones at their funeral think "wow, at least nobody ever hurt their feelings"?
No it doesn't work, as in there is actual scientific evidence that disproves that shaming is a valid way to modify behaviour towards better health. In fact it's likely making things worse (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6565398/)
The more people are exposed to weight bias and discrimination, the more likely they are to gain weight and become obese, even if they were thin to begin with. They’re also more likely to die from any cause, regardless of their body mass index (BMI).
Fat shaming is also linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, eating disorders and exercise avoidance, Alberga said. There’s emerging evidence that the severity of harm increases when people internalize weight bias and turn it on themselves. In one study, participants with high levels of internalization of weight-bias had three times greater odds of having metabolic syndrome than those with low levels, even after controlling for BMI and other risk factors
Given what obese people deal with on a regular basis, your fat shaming is really unlikely to make much of a difference on the margin and is more likely to be counter-productive by making them more depressed.
There is also a huge difference between sharing candid concerns about someone's weight when you already know them and can be somewhat compassionate about it and shaming a random person you don't know.
Yes, you are fat shaming if you mention they are unhealthy and overweight. The idea that you are in the wrong for pointing this out is mind-blowing to me.
While it may not be an effective means of changing their behavior it is a valid means of framing conversations around what is desirable and healthy. If we continue to allow peoples feelings about how they feel override what we objectively know to be good we will be on the fast train to hell.
I think in general it’s considered rude to mention that someone is stupid, unattractive, poor, etc. Overall, people are already suffering from low confidence due to these issues and pointing them out only hurts them. Unless someone is seeking out honest feedback in these areas, it’s probably better not to volunteer any. On the other hand, it’s fine to talk about how society has a problem with education, poverty, or obesity and suggest society-scale solutions.
Agreed... a few years ago, I was getting a bit plump in the mid-section. My wife's grandmother from Colombia strait up told me I was looking "gordo" (fat). I got on it immediately and shed the spare tire. I thanked her for being honest and open... I wish I could tell others the same.
“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
I kind of understand the backlash against the skinny-chic look foisted upon people by the baddies in the fashion industry, but now there’s an equally bad movement which kind of says “it’s cool to be overweight, don’t sweat it, this is how we are”. Yes, true, for some people there is little recourse, their physiology is such, but a majority could become healthier with a better lifestyle choice.
>I kind of understand the backlash against skinny-chic foisted upon people by the baddies in the fashion industry
This is a weird trope. Most models are selected to be slender so they can, basically, simulate a clothes rack. No curves to draw attention!
I'm not sure the fashion industry is telling anyone this is ideal. I can't remember, in my lifetime, when skinny models were ever really looked at by society-at-large as the "right" body type. They were always seen as "skinny models". Of course there are people with all sorts of preferences, but the most celebrated models of my youth (say, Heidi Klum or Tara Banks) were relatively fit as opposed to withering.
On the other hand, many people (both men and women) end up with eating disorders trying to reach this "ideal".
But we do have to recognize the effects that are also had on people, your last sentence is a heavier weighting than your perception.
People have not been capable of separating an industry ideal from a non-industry related attractiveness ideal.
Individuals know what they like, visually and sexually. Individuals are also aware of what the seeming consensus of "should like" is, visually and sexually. Simple put, people know when other people are considered hot and what that looks like.
I agree with you, one of the contributors to the systemic problem is fashion (and by extension all media, print, digital, video, etc.)
My point here though is that it’s only a minority who “can’t help it, they were born that way”. Most would be able to overcome this issue if the dynamics were different.
I don't think that is true. Part of the problem is that once you are obese then it's already kind of game over. There seems to be a pretty strong consensus that losing large amounts of weight is extremely hard and even when it does happen, people tend to eventually gain it all back.
I see the body positivity movement as just trying to reconcile that reality. If you are already obese then you might as well try and find a way to live a happy life because you are probably never going to be slender again.
Individuals have the right to choose obesity and pay their own costs related to it. This isn't "mob rule" because nobody is really forcing anyone else to be obese.
There's no problem to solve other than being more cognizant of the costs obesity will impose on one as an individual.
Now run the numbers again with socialized healthcare. When society's tax dollars are funding your triple bypass from your 30+ BMI it's absolutely societies business.
Society pays for it too. Less so than some countries given America's private healthcare system, but as an extreme example... what happens if America needs more soldiers? Overeating means more agriculture means more land used/more inputs required/more carbon burned. Illness and early deaths has an impact on productivity. No man is an island, everything you do has an impact on society.
A minor one, and misunderstanding of the argument.
The "obese-normalization" you speak is about fat-shaming abolitionism, against discrimination in professional and social spaces because of body composition, not that such a body type is necessarily encouraged.
Furthermore the categorization of "obese", and BMI in general, has a pile of research exposing all the caveats and encouraged more granular diagnoses around mass composition for humans. You can be categorized as obese and have perfectly fine physical function. For example, pretty much every football player is overweight, most are obese. BMI charts are only a cursory step towards a proper analysis.
If you understand that obesity comes from a medical or mental condition, then a culture of fat-shaming is comparable to having a culture of shaming those suffering from PTSD or depression or birth abnormalities, et al. That sort of culture doesn't have many positive societal effects beyond pushing people into mental duress about things they are still trying to figure out how to manage. Any hyper-normalization of extreme obesity is a side effect of the propensity of such a shaming culture as it becomes more of a political statement than a medical one (or more fringe culture i.e kinks).
Being against removing this discrimination from our culture only makes sense if you believe that an effective methodology for overcoming a health problem is by being abused by society into action conformity.
Simply, if you're too fat you should be allowed to deal with that very personal issue on your own terms and not be ostracized from professional or social spaces.
The main aspect is a demonization of fatty foods, propagandized heavily by the sugar and soft drink industry, which market realities have shifted food products to compensate for the lack of flavor and satiation from fat by loading them with sugar. This is all compounded by massive corn subsidies in the US making it extremely tempting to load up recipes with cheap, sweet, calorie dense, corn syrup. (some random chart after quick search about this https://imgur.com/nvWRyrh)
As a lifelong morbidly obese person, and I admit that this is anecdata, this is categorically not true, for me. I feel no normalizations. I feel no mob, on my side. Rather, I feel a gigantic mob on the "just lose weight you fat person" side. I still have doctors that won't take any ailment seriously because their first response is "just lose weight you fat person".
There is a simple solution to the obesity epidemic: levy a heavy tax on any kind of sugar or grain that enters the food system and use the money to subsidize red meat.
A carnivore diet that avoids plant-based foods altogether is ideal for human health and is almost impossible to remain obese on.
For faster or more thorough weight loss cut out dairy as well. Find more information at https://MeatRx.com/
Yes, there is a ton of science supporting not eating plants.
In fact, entire human societies have survived for generations on entirely animal-based diets but a human being cannot even survive on a diet devoid of animal-based foods (vegans have to supplement or else they die).
You're right that ketogenic diets don't have to be meat-centric. This is why I promote the carnivore diet and not the ketogenic diet.
Not all of the resources I pointed you to are about ketogenic diets, though -- some are about carnivore diets. For instance, there are the books of Vilhjalmur Stefansson who lived for years on a meat-only diet and was monitored at Harvard while on this diet.
Nina Teicholz also provides a phenomenal tour of the literature and demonstrates that a lot of the science does in fact support a carnivore diet. You should look up some of her phenomenal lectures on YouTube, or read her book The Big Fat Surprise: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...
I appreciate your desire to evangelize a thing you believe in. I am not really asking about the benefit of a ketogenic diet, I am asking specifically about the ways in which a Carnivore diet increases the benefits of ketosis as opposed to just a normal Ketogenic diet. The book you linked seemed to be in advocacy of dietary fat, which both Ketogenic and Carnivore diets both agree with. That is again not really what I'm asking.
I'm also not really sure why I would donate money to a cause I do not believe in/that is not backed by science.
The carnivore diet is not necessarily a ketogenic diet, although it is an extremely low-carb diet. However, the carnivore diet gives you all the benefits of ketosis and a lot more.
The problem with plant-based foods is that they contain fiber and a bunch of anti-nutrients but the ketogenic diet permits this. Once you cut out all plant-based food then you experience the wonders of an elimination diet -- because you have eliminated anything in your food that you might have a mild allergy or reaction to.
Things I noticed when I went carnivore were: improved skin, improved nasal breathing, cessation of heartburn, improved bowel movements, dramatically fewer bowel movements, weight loss and muscle growth, a complete cessation of farting/gas, more ear wax, less joint pain, less water weight (because no carbohydrates), more stable energy and mood, and probably a couple more things I've forgotten.
It is true that there are not a lot of studies that have been performed on the carnivore diet. But beware that human nutrition is almost impossibly difficult to do large randomized controlled trials on. This is simply an extraordinarily difficult area in which to get the science right, which is why the US dietary guidelines are such a bunch of crap and we've ended up with an obesity epidemic and chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease absolutely rampant.
There is one way in which you can perform elite nutrition science, however -- you can experiment on yourself. I urge you to try a carnivore diet for six weeks and just observe the results. Stick to steak, eggs, sardines, fish, bone broth, beef liver, and ground beef. Avoid dairy and don't drink any calories. This is an extraordinarily difficult diet for people to follow for some reason (because they are carb addicts) but it is nutritionally overflowing and you will see dramatic effects if you stick to it.
> The carnivore diet is not necessarily a ketogenic diet, although it is an extremely low-carb diet. However, the carnivore diet gives you all the benefits of ketosis and a lot more.
I am asking you to support this claim with science-based research, that explicitly studies the differences. The rest of your post is mostly just noise if that research isn't readily available.
I am more than aware of the troubles of doing legitimate scientific research at scale on diet. And yet, you yourself were able to provide scholarly articles on the benefits of a Ketogenic diet.
I have done both carnivore and generalized ketogenic diets in the past. I am also an extreme skeptic at fad diets like the Carnivore diet. I've yet to see a single piece of legitimate evidence to suggest that the Carnivore diet is anything more than a Joe Rogan-backed ketogenic diet.
Can't you just try the diet and see for yourself? That would be a lot more reliable way to determine the effects of the diet on your health than waiting around for decades for research that may not ever be properly conducted and which in any case would have been conducted on someone else. If you try the carnivore diet then you can just see the results for yourself in yourself. What's the downside to eating nothing but eggs, sardines, and ground beef for six weeks?
It does keep you full and likely will help you avoid eating too much. But don't go tricking yourself into believing it's "ideal" for your body with that as your only data point.
When I go to a meat-heavy diet, I do not have bowel movements for 10-14 days. And I don't feel constipated. Your mileage may vary. I don't recommend it though.
This is one of the best things about the carnivore diet, in fact. Once your digestion adjusts you have the smoothest digestion and most efficient bowel movements imaginable.
When you eat a steak almost the entire steak is absorbed into the body -- there is no indigestible fiber and other gunk that needs to be pooped out.
If you quit plants cold turkey and immediately switch over to a high-fat meat diet then you will have to prepare yourself for about a week of runny stool as your digestion adjusts. It's not a big deal and once you're in the clear it is smoother sailing than you knew was possible.
Given the important role that dietary fibre plays in regulating healthy poops, I'm going to have to say I don't believe you. You seem to be advocating that meat is magic.
It seems it has more to do with the "empty calories" that are in processed foods. Sugar (in its many names: corn syrup, etc.) is put in everything, even in things that do not need it such as bread and yogurt. I would be in favor of taxing producers that put sugar in everything just to get people hooked. It's immoral and corrupt to say the least.
In fact India does have a lot of obesity. The rates are not yet as high as they are in the US because they are even more oppressed by poverty, meaning that 1. even inexpensive food is in limited supply, and 2. many Indians still rely on manual labor which keeps obesity rates down.
It is noteworthy that India has a massive problem with diabetes and also has the lowest life expectancy in the world.
That's utterly unfeasible as a mass strategy for weight loss. Have everyone replace the cheap and easy grains with high carbon emission and expensive meat? How does that work even on a supermarket infrastructure level? Cheap and easy cereals get replaced with jerky?
I get it, you're trying to sell individuals on a red meat fad, but as a national strategy it's senseless.
I disagree entirely. 200 years ago we had herds of Bison roaming the great American plains that were so large it would take the herd five days to pass a camp site. We can go back to that kind of herding if we want to. It is agriculture that is destroying our environment with pesticides and destroying human health with carbohydrates. Meat is also not as big an impact of global warming as people think it is -- the health care industry has a far greater carbon emission problem and the health care industry would be decimated if our society turned to eating red meat in massive quantities and avoided sugar and grains entirely.
200 years ago we weren't trying to feed hundreds of millions of people, and the small population that was there managed to kill them all off. That would a massive scale up of animals and they couldn't just roam - if you want to work at industrial levels you need to use industrial methods - to be viable they'd need to continue to be factory farmed, which requires a larger supporting infrastructure of grain.
I say that we start by adding 60 million bison to our national capacity and then solve problems as they arise. I'm okay with feeding the cattle some grain toward the end in feed lots. I wouldn't describe this as "factory farming", though, which is a term more appropriately used to describe how pigs and chickens are often raised and which I do think is cruel. But we don't have this problem with larger ruminants.
In other words: "tax anyone who doesn't follow my fad diet"
Whole grains, fruits, vegetables (and sure meat too) are time and time again show to be healthy components of the human diet. Just cutting out the sugar, white flour, and trans fats will take you a long ways.
Whole grains and white grains both just turn to glucose in your system -- so you're kidding yourself if you think whole grains area healthy in any respect, but especially if you think they are healthy in comparison to white grains.
And I'm not sure why you think whole grains have "time and time again" been shown to be healthy components of the human diet. In fact, we have known for hundreds of years that grain-based human societies have suffered shorter stature, more disease, and more dental cavities than hunter-gatherer societies.
The ancient Egyptians, for instance, had lots of heart disease, as we can detect from their mummies, and they had an agricultural civilization based on grains grown in the Nile delta.
I've gone pretty rare on my steaks, and I've eaten raw eggs (100% safe if you wash them since any salmonella danger is from contamination on the outside of the shell) but I have not yet eaten 100% raw red meat.
It seems that both numbers are from the same report. Here's an excerpt from the report:
> How is it that only 12 states have adult obesity rates exceeding 35 percent, yet the national obesity rate is 42.4 percent? It’s because state obesity rates are from the BRFSS, which collects self-reported height and weight. Research has demonstrated that people tend to overestimate their height and underestimate their weight. In fact, one study found that, due to this phenomenon, the BRFSS may underestimate obesity rates by nearly 10 percent. NHANES, from which the national obesity rate is derived, calculates its obesity rate based on measurements obtained at respondents’ physical examinations. Accordingly, the higher rates found by NHANES are a more accurate reflection of obesity in the United States.
I am 6' and weight 190-195, I was 175 before the pandemic. I am considered overweight now, though I don't think I quite meet the obesity requirements. I think the pandemic and its stress toll has given people something the equivalent of the "Freshman 10."
And when people wonder what I mean: I tell them "Its like the Freshmen 15, except its the weight gained from COVID19 lockdowns".
Although more seriously, when I gained ~5 lbs, I started to eat healthier, and shed that weight back down to my normal <180lbs. For 5'10, I'm still slightly overweight by BMI (and I'm not very lean or strong, so I doubt its muscle).
This. Before the whole corona hysteria I was well on track of getting into the best shape in my life having lost 18 kg in 4 months and reduced body fat by 10%. The whole lockdown reversed all that and then some. They took away my routine, my gym, even my food temporarily and put me under house arrest.
Yup. I dropped my usual gym routine and went entirely to cardio because I recognized if I didn't I was going to have problems - finished my first (informal - just me and Strava) half marathon a couple of weeks back.
Exactly. Getting in good shape is incredibly hard for most and people who haven't done this don't realize just how important the routine and having the freedom to maintain it is. How important is unrestricted access to food and gym is. "Go jog outside" is a joke of a suggestion when you've been into fitness for a long time and understand what it takes.
Bike + trainer indoors, bike outdoors. Preferably away from busy roads. Make sure you have hills, otherwise 15 mi is a minimum. Bike club is good, there's a bit of peer pressure which creates a routine. Also rope jumping but be careful if you're too heavy, buy good shoes, otherwise you'll injure your feet.
It had the opposite impact for me, honestly - no more eating out for lunch, no commute (which I repurposed for workouts), and less social meals/drinking. (I'm also young, was already in shape, and have no kids - so that helps lmao)
I would love to see stats on weight change over the population.
In a work or event situation, it's easy to end up eating a big lunch by default because the food is subsidized/free, it's the social thing to do, etc. I (normally) do a lot of events and one of the changes I made a while back was to generally take it easy at lunch and not eat food just because it's there or free for lunch of an afternoon break. (Especially given that, in convention centers, it tends to be pretty awful anyway.)
The part about how food insecurity causes obesity is hard to understand. Its well documented that poverty leads to unhealthier food. Its obvious that poverty leads to food insecurity. Still, wrapping ones head around how not having enough to eat leads one to be obese is tough to grok. Really emphasizes just how bad cheap is for you.
The part about how 12 states have averages above 35%... didn't make sense to me if the national average is 42. Maybe I missed something.
Rice, beans, sugar, and bread are cheap foods -- if you are trapped in poverty then you will be eating a carb-heavy mostly plant-based diet and you'll probably also be consuming a lot of sugar. Carbohydrates are what lead to obesity. Cutting carbs out entirely is a healthy way to cut weight, but that would mean eating only meat, which is comparatively expensive. This is why poor people are fat.
I don’t understand. There are entire nations (eg. Pakistan, Bangladesh) where meat is a delicacy and Rice and Wheat is what feeds the masses, the obesity ratio I’ve personally observed is nowhere near the US.
India and Pakistan suffer from the lowest life expectancy in the world and diabetes is exploding. They do in fact have a fair amount of obesity, but the rate is not as high as it is in the west because it is overpowered by poverty, so they are on a low-calorie version of a poor diet. There is also much more manual labor happening in India, which keeps the weight off.
There are rich countries like Japan and South Korea that consume between 8 to 12 times [0] as much rice as the US and have much lower obesity rates (almost a tenth) [1].
8 to 12 times rice doesn't mean much if its substituted by a different carb, like bread or pasta. But the point holds. I've heard tell of Japanese doctors recommending people eat more rice as western diets begin to cause problems in Japan.
Good point, rice could be substituted by another carb, but OP was explicitly talking about low carb diets. South Korean maybe don't eat as much beard or pasta, but for sure they are not having a low carb diet, yet they are not fat.
Japanese also eat a fairly high amount of meat. But I also think you may be correct that rice is a less dangerous carb than wheat, which contains gluten. In South Korea obesity rates are in fact increasing and the fact that you should avoid eating a lot of rice if you want to stay slender is well-understood. In North Korea, on the other hand, white rice is more of a staple and yet obesity rates are not as high because the general poverty of the society as a whole is overpowering.
Also, a note: not everyone can eat a meat-heavy diet. I cannot. I don't have a gall bladder - like many others - and cannot digest the fats well. Eggs are too much sometimes.
Not only that, but you can eat perfectly healthy without actual meat. Low quality foods - meatless or not - generally have a lot of empty calories and aren't very filling, making it easier to gain weight.
What makes a food "low quality" vs "high quality"?
I would argue that the answer is the nutrient to calorie ratio. Many nutrients for few calories is good, but few nutrients for many calories is bad. By this analysis, plant-based food is "low quality" and animal-based food is "high quality".
So if calories are what make you gain weight then it makes sense that people following a plant-based diet would gain weight compared to people following an animal-based diet because they will need to consume more calories to acquire the same amount of nutrients.
But this isn't true, and your conclusion is false. It won't matter where you get calories if you need them: Calorie-dense, nutrient low foods can have a place in diet. Sometimes, folks just need calories (it used to be that some marathon runners loaded up on carbs before a race: I don't know if this is still true) And to be fair, I've lost weight - and kept it off - without eating meat. As have many, many others. Some of this is because nutrient-low foods don't make up a huge portion of my diet: Instead, it is beans and lentils and rice and a wide variety of vegetables with a bit of eggs and cheese and the occasional fake meat for textures and eating favorites.
The main reason folks lose weight on meat-heavy diets is because they tend to eat less and therefore eat fewer calories. But there is more than one path to eating fewer calories. Lentils and beans tend and some vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which keep you full longer and tend to mean you eat less. Not to mention that a plate full of vegetables and beans tends to have fewer calories than a plate of meat - and hold a variety of nutrients as well.
Yes, you do need a certain number of calories just to keep your heart beating. My point is that once you already have all the calories you need it would be too bad if you needed to keep eating in order to get all the nutrients that you need. That is why it is favorable to eat red meat.
You are correct when you state at the beginning of your second paragraph that people on meat-heavy diets tend to eat fewer calories. But you are incorrect when you state at the end of that paragraph that a plate full of plant food will have fewer calories than a plate of meat. If this were true, then people on meat-heavy diets must not be finishing their plates of food, since they end up consuming fewer calories.
As for your own diet, it's a good thing you have the eggs and cheese in there! That's where your vital nutrition is coming from. The rice and beans and veggies are just keeping you alive with calories but not carrying their weight in terms of nutrition. You could be doing worse, such as eating a bunch of bread and pasta, or even worse than that, soda and candy, but you could also be doing much better by eating mostly steak and sardines.
A calorie's a calorie's a calorie. The food being cheap doesn't suddenly make it more fattening. You can be skinny on a diet of birthday cake if you wanted to.
* Not being sure that the next meal is coming means you have to pack on some lbs to reach the point where you can go a few days without a square meal.
* The not actually getting the next meal makes you ravenously hungry when it comes even if on average you're overeating. It's why people with EDs aren't automatically skinny -- if you restrict and then binge you can/will gain weight.
There is a large difference in satiety between, say, 1000 calories of steak versus potato chips. This has a large effect on what you eat later, despite what you might want.
This actually isn't fully true, we don't digest all kinds calories equally. Generally speaking, yes, the most important factor in body weight is the total amount of calories consumed. Whether they are proteins, fats, complex carbs, or simple carbs, and when you consume them during the day, effects how much of that energy actually gets stored in the body.
https://www.strongerbyscience.com has an article somewhere on this, and it's not well tested yet, but we're starting to see some scientific evidence to back this up.
The question isn’t whether the effect exists. It would be incredibly surprising to discover that our bodies absorb literally every single food exactly the same.
The question is whether the effect is large enough to actually matter. And maybe it does, maybe there is a magic diet that allows you to eat well above your TDEE without gaining weight but nobody has found it yet.
This is a very bad meme. There's many factors that influence how much weight you may gain besides calories consumed. At the more obvious end of the spectrum, if you eat corn, and poop out undigested corn, that's definitely not a calorie nor a calorie nor a calorie.
On the margins you’re absolutely right. But for basically everyone it literally doesn’t matter. Nobody’s diet is precise enough to play these games.
Every diet that’s effective is CACO. Use whatever structure you need to actually accomplish it. If it means no carbs, vegetarianism, Atkins, WeightWatchers then good on you. Calorie tracking is a bitch and if you have a rule of thumb that works for you then enjoy it.
You've been vigorously defending your position all over this thread without relying on specific scientific evidence. Can you provide further reading to convince us that the mantra "a calorie is a calorie" is useful to guide the modification of diet for weight loss and health?
For what it's worth, here are two peer-reviewed articles that contradict that idea. The thermodynamic truism that "a calorie is a calorie" is true because it's a tautology, but misses the point almost entirely.
EDIT: "a calorie is a calorie" is about as useful and relevant as saying "the key is to earn more than you spend" in the context of trying to save money, or raise yourself out of poverty. Technically absolutely true, but woefully unhelpful.
"Diets high in protein and/or low in carbohydrate produced an ≈2.5-kg greater weight loss after 12 wk of treatment. Neither macronutrient-specific differences in the availability of dietary energy nor changes in energy expenditure could explain these differences in weight loss."
"Over a million calories are consumed a year yet weight changes to only a small extent; there must be mechanisms that balance energy intake and expenditure. As obesity reflects only a small malfunctioning of these mechanisms, there is a need to understand the control of energy balance and how to prevent the regaining of weight after it has been lost. By itself, decreasing calorie intake will have a limited short-term influence."
Their entire theory is that different macro balances lead people to eat less because they're more satiating. Which is true but doesn't contradict the point that the actual thing that matters is CICO. Certain diets may make it easier or harder in terms of willpower but it doesn't change the underlying forces.
#2 agrees with me too! That abstract is criminally misleading.
> We conclude that a calorie is a calorie. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, this is clear because the human body or, indeed, any living organism cannot create or destroy energy but can only convert energy from one form to another. In comparing energy balance between dietary treatments, however, it must be remembered that the units of dietary energy are metabolizable energy and not gross energy. This is perhaps unfortunate because metabolizable energy is much more difficult to determine than is gross energy.
and
> Of course, the increased energy expenditure associated with increased protein intake also does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, because the energy is conserved. It does, however, come close to the spirit of the argument that a calorie is not a calorie, because feeding diets that induce a difference in energy expenditure can introduce a difference in energy balance and thus a difference in weight loss. Of the macronutrients, only protein has been found to have this effect, but the magnitude of this effect is small and perhaps accounts for a 0.8-kg difference in weight loss between diet treatments over 12 wk
If this is your argument then we're just arguing semantics. The only thing that matters is energy expenditure and total metabolized energy intake (which is CICO!). Like people already understand that our bodies metabolize foods differently (like the meme about celery being negative calories) but broadly following the standard nutrition info is a damn good proxy on average for metabolized energy.
> is true because it's a tautology, but misses the point almost entirely.
I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake. If you're not losing weight you need to eat less and exercise more and vice versa if you want to gain weight. There's really nothing else to it. Every diet just provides some structure that makes the process easier since our bodies don't like it.
> I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake
It's not though. That's not what the papers are saying. They're saying a calorie is a calorie. But calories turned into long term fat reserves are not equal to calories put in mouth - calories used in exercise. You can change the outcome of your diet by changing the composition of your diet while holding total calories the same.
I feel like we're talking past each other. There are two truths here:
* total energy intake and expenditure are the only things that really matter for weight loss
* for some foods, there is a difference between the nutrition info listed calories and the metabolized calories
Which implies what you're saying. If you play with your diet you can potentially keep the nutrition info listed calories constant while reducing your "real" energy intake.
This feels like semantics because all you're really saying is that commonly understood nutrition info is inaccurate (which is true -- hell nutrition labels are allowed by the FDA to be off by 20%). In a perfect world with perfect information counting calories would be counting metabolized calories. But unless you're raising cattle on narrow diets the problem ranges from hard to impossible for real food. So the normal calorie counts that dieters use acts as a proxy and if done right, a rough upper bound.
> I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake. If you're not losing weight you need to eat less and exercise more and vice versa if you want to gain weight. There's really nothing else to it.
This is the crux of what I think misses the point so entirely that you might not see it: "the point" is to figure out how to lose weight (and keep it off while being healthy). Beating on the dead horse of thermodynamic laws is utterly irrelevant to the question of which macronutrients have what effect on body fat and bodyweight.
As I wrote in my edit, "a calorie is a calorie" is exactly as useful as dieting advice as "just spend less and earn more" is useful budgeting advice. The advice-giver can feel satisfied that they've emphasized a physical-mathematical truth, without realizing that they haven't actually done anything to help.
> the point" is to figure out how to lose weight (and keep it off while being healthy)
Well yeah, and finding a good macro balance is huge positive for your overall health. But beating the dead horse of technicalities about how our bodies metabolize different foods a little differently is utterly irrelevant to the question of how much energy am I intaking (and metabolizing) and how much am I expending which is the only thing that has any meaningful effect on body fat and body weight unless your already fit and doing athletic training.
There's lots of good advice on dieting: eating high-volume foods, keeping track of satiation, staying hydrated, eating slower, staving off cravings by not quitting foods cold turkey, focusing on exercises that have a good kcal/time ratio, understanding the process model for self-control and managing your willpower. But all of it has the singular goal and of making net calorie expenditure positive and what tricks and rules of thumb that work for people is personal and situation dependent.
Telling someone to adjust their macros as dieting advice is setting them up for failure unless you happen to already know that the result of their adjustments will put them in a deficit. It's really hard to help people who are doing some diet like keto, aren't losing weight, and end up frustrated because "it's supposed to work." But when you estimate their TDEE and count their calories the problem becomes super obvious.
There's a thermodynamic upper bound on the energy you can extract from a dietary calorie. In that sense, the physical sense, a calorie is a calorie.
In the dietary sense, calories are NOT equal. It's easy to change a person's body mass by changing their diet while keeping calories the same. Mixing simple carbohydrates with fat is an effective way to get our metabolism to generate body fat. Simple carbohydrates in general, really, since our body is forced to process them into fat quickly or else our blood pH reaches harmful levels.
Repeating "a calorie is a calorie" is harmful for people considering their diet, and a truism if you're speaking to a physicist. In either case, not helpful.
See, I feel this is the exact opposite. Telling people that it’s possible to lose weight without running a caloric deficit one way or another is the most harmful piece of advice to give to anyone who’s on a diet.
I do not deny that it is probably possible to min max your diet and exploit some of our bodies weirdness. But on a macro scale none of that shit matters. If you run a caloric deficit it literally does not matter in the slightest what your body does to the food: it can store in fat, it can burn it immediately no matter what your body is still going to have to burn all of its reserves to operate.
The first line states: "The U.S. adult obesity rate passed the 40 percent mark for the first time, standing at 42.4 percent"
Then just a couple of paragraphs later: "Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate in the country at 40.8 percent and Colorado has the lowest at 23.8 percent. Twelve states have adult rates above 35 percent."
It is impossible for the national obesity rate to be 42.4 percent if no state has an obesity rate above 40.8 percent.
Maybe if you are poor, you are more likely to seek out temporary happiness at the cost of longer term consequences, because your life is generally more stressful. So if you worked another day at the job you hate you are more likely to go get a couple hamburgers from McDonald's than go home and eat some pasta for the same price because you enjoy it more. Poor people are also much more likely to smoke, another activity which trades short term happiness for longer term consequences.
Cheap food is subsidized by the government due to lobbying of large and powerful industries. These foods (empty carbs, cheap vegetable oils) are extremely unhealthy for humans. If that’s all you can afford then you really have no choice.
Receiving food stamps are correlated with obesity. Very few countries have food stamps except USA. Poor people who don't get food stamps are healthier than poor people who do get them. So the problem isn't lack of money, it is that food stamps incentivise them to buy junk food instead of cooking on their own.
I have three major comments about this. First, most countries use a lot of public transportation, which often requires walking roughly a mile to and again from work and commerce centers. This "forces" them to get regular exercise. Our car culture cuts into that.
Second, we need better food labeling. "Serving size" is too arbitrary. Instead use ratios: ratio per N calories, and ratio per weight. That way we can easily compare across product types. It can be worded as "X units per N calories" and "X units per gram", or the like. The units would be standardized.
Third, include percent of whole-ness of grain. It's hard to know otherwise. We need to eat more whole grains, but 100% is not very tasty to most such that a mix is decent compromise. But we need better numbers to know the mix percent.
> Second, we need better food labeling. "Server size" is too arbitrary. Instead use ratios: ratio per N calories, and ratio per weight. That way we can easily compare across product types. It can be worded as "X units per N calories" and "X units per gram", or the like.
In Europe labels need to have nutritional information using standard units (e.g. 100g or 100ml). It seems very odd they don't require that in the US too.
The whole "serving size" thing borders on absurdity sometimes. I picked up a bag of granola the other day which is "only" 110 calories per serving, but a relatively small bag is somehow 15 servings. For me, using what I would consider a normal cereal bowl (not some freakishly large serving dish or anything) gets me 3-4 "servings." Who the hell is eating 1/2 a cup of cereal at a time!?
I'd be interested to see the rates segmented by generation. Everyone in my generation (millennial) seems to be very sugar adverse, has that done anything to lower obesity rates?
Ask any traveller to the US what their trip was like, and at some point they will mention how portion sizes are gigantic. I have to agree, every time I've eaten there it's been way bigger than both what's good for me and what I was happy to get get for the price. This doesn't seem to stop at restaurants, I went to a supermarket and you can mega sized versions of just about anything. Even the strawberries seem to be bigger. You can get buckets of jelly babies. The ready made pizzas seem to be bigger. Just everything.
At the same time, most travellers will tell you the food was delicious. This may be good for keeping customers happy, but it's going to tend to mean things that our hunter gatherer ancestors wanted to stock up on, in quantities they would rarely find.
Finally, sweets and junk food in America are like crack. I don't know what they put in it, but just about everything in that category is more enticing than the same categories in Europe.
My brother had a six pack before he moved there. Now he has a beer belly.
As a US native, this a thousand times. When I started doing meal prep for an exercise program, and really loading things up with protein, I was surprised at just how little I needed to eat throughout the day to feel satiated and energized, even while beginning a workout routine that was quite tough for a beginner.
Sometimes I still like to eat out, but it's a rare treat, I can't do it every day like I used to when I was younger. Even then, I'll usually look for the junior portions, which are plenty filling.
Before COVID, I was visiting the US 2-3 times a year, but only the northeast region. Are massive portion sizes more common in certain parts of the country? My naive impression is that portion sizes are bigger in the south, but I have no idea where I absorbed this belief from.
I've lived in South Texas, Washington State, Missouri, and Tennessee, and I don't really recall a difference in overall portion size at restaurants, fast food locations, or typical diners. A lot of the popular chains have standardized their menus, so you can usually pull up the online menu and check out the nutritional data. For international chains, it might be interesting to compare overall calorie counts if the region specific menus are available?
Most of my time in the US has been in the northeast and I've noticed that whenever I've gone to a conference, the south has significantly larger portion sizes at their establishments.
> I went to a supermarket and you can mega sized versions of just about anything.
Americans love bulk purchase discounts. Contrast that to time I spent in France where seemingly invariably larger packages would cost more per quantity than smaller ones. Seeing that did weird things to my brain.
> at some point they will mention how portion sizes are gigantic.
Do you generally have doggy-bags (leftovers carry-out) outside the US? The portions sizes are large for a few reasons: 1) pricing needs to stay high as rents are still high or the restaurant will fold (most do anyway). 2) people often take leftovers home
So you pay higher prices for more food, and a 2nd (or sometimes 3rd) meal at home.
I think the bigger issue is that due to sprawl and walk/bike-unfriendliness, people take their cars everywhere. As a part of COVID restrictions my family has started using bikes to things we would normally get in a car for - e.g. get takeout or library - but most people don't.
It is changing and it's great. It used to be unheard of (or even made fun of), but nowadays it's acceptable in most places. That being said, I rarely have the need for one except in Indian restaurants.
My parents ran a restaurant, and my extended family run restaurants in different countries.
In most places I'd say you can get a doggy-bag, but unless it's because your kids won't eat, you won't. Unless you're going to take-away most of the meal, you probably won't need a box. People do sometimes not eat everything, but there's not a lot of point in saving two or three bites.
My sense is that most restaurants in the US could just charge more for the same, and people would just pay it. Perhaps the doggy-bag thing has changed expectations so that won't work, who knows.
I'm not sure cycling is going to fix obesity. If you're getting a meal that's 2x what it's supposed to be, which seems to be what happens in the US, and a normal meal at a restaurant is maybe 1000-1500 calories, cycling isn't gonna be enough to help you. For reference I can do maybe 10 calories a minute on my elliptical, and I can hold that pace for maybe an hour. And that's some workout, quite a lot harder than a bike ride.
Agree, but it helps. You can burn a few hundred kcal everyday with light exercise which helps to maintain a healthy weight. But of course, no realistic amount of exercise will help to compensate for a junk food diet (especially if you're already overweight and unable to exercise safely).
Next time you're in the US, go to a Costco - it's where Americans go when normal portion sizes are too small. Sizes are 2-4x regular grocery store sizes. It's the America of America.
Idk - everyone I see there looks like they're shopping for a family. They're a wholesale warehouse like Wal-Mart is/was a wholesale warehouse... it's still meant for individuals.
I can’t buy bulk food at Wal-Mart like I do at Costco, I agree with the comment you’re responding to. Costco sells in bulk which causes the prices to be lower (or seem lower, relatively) and I know of quite a few restaurants who source their ingredients from there, which may make up some of the people you see with carts loaded with things like coffee or tomatoes.
Statements in this vein get made quite a bit. But, as someone who lives in the US and (normally) travels around Europe quite a bit, I'm at least a little bit skeptical. Certainly when I'm eating out in Europe I don't think to myself "My, what small portions." (Admittedly, in the US some meals come with a lot of cheap carbs like potatoes but that's hardly unknown in Europe in my experience as well.)
>Even the strawberries seem to be bigger.
That's mostly industrialized farming for you. If you buy locally grown strawberries in, say, New England in season, they're both much tastier and smaller.
I have to agree, I travel Europe alot too, meals in London and Prague are plenty big. I had a seven course dinner in Paris that my Local friend took me too to share a place she would regularly go with her family, who are quite thin. I think a combination of multiple factors including less sugars, ample walking, a general culture of baseline thinness, and cheap/affordable/healthy snacks at bodegas/grocery stores. I tend to lose weight in europe by adopting this lifestyle, coffee and a croissant in the morning, a small cold cuts and cheese for lunch and a large dinner with wine. This is also a metropolitan lifestyle, could it be that city life is more conductive to staying thin?
Last time I went to london though, the obesity problem was looking bad.
One other point I want to make is that young people in europe do tend to look healthier than young people in america, I believe the food quality and standards/lower supply of fast food franchises helps alot. Quick food in europe tends to offer healthier and higher quality options.
I can certainly believe that a non-trivial part of overeating in the US is having 2 or even 3 high calorie meals per day (plus snacks)--rather than people routinely eating dinners that are too big.
>could it be that city life is more conductive to staying thin
Maybe? I'm not sure most people walk enough in a city on a day-to-day basis going into an office to really move the needle. And they're probably eating out more and cooking at home less than they would if they had to hop in a car and drive somewhere. Which certainly can lead to eating more than you want.
> Last time I went to london though, the obesity problem was looking bad.
Indeed, some parts of Europe do have obesity problems too. England obviously, but France is catching up. Junk food is getting increasingly pervasive. I think we're just lagging 10 years behind the US but we're getting there.
Large sizes at the supermarket, I think, are simply because Americans shop maybe once a week at the supermarket while Europeans will shop everyday or every other day.
This is because Americans will typically drive to the supermarket and can carry a lot of stuff home, while Europeans will take public transport or walk, and can't carry as much.
Additionally houses in Europe are a lot smaller and they just don't have room to store so much, while in America houses tend to be larger (at least if you're not in a dense city).
I think Europeans also just care more about the freshness of their food than typical Americans, and they're willing to shop more often for it (i'm American but know Europeans who have culture shock when visiting the US and see the mass-produced, packaged food here).
Also we drive everywhere. Other countries in Europe/Asia/Africa walking is normal. People will walk to their neighbor, the park, work, or the market. US cities have some walk-ability features but streets in US suburbs are not walkable, you have to drive everywhere. Even if you walk here in the suburbs, people in their cars rubberneck and find you interesting. My observations anyway.
I have lost some weight during the quarantine. My explanation is that when working at the office I typically have lunch with a deli sandwich or something from a food truck. These portions are set based on a) what the business needs to charge per portion to stay solvent, and b) what the downtown office worker expects to get for that price ($8 to $12, say.) At home, I eat a lighter lunch, and some pounds have come off.
If anybody in the US thinks like you, we shouldn't have a problem with weight. After my dad passed away from a massive stroke, my revelation is that to combat obesity "you could eat most food, in reasonable amount, exercise wisely". I say most because for people with pre-existing conditions, some kind of food you are to avoid.
I'm tired of all of the diet tricks out there. At some point, my weight is going back up again. But, for the last year or so, I eat less meat/dairy and more of the veggie/tofu. I lost 10 lbs and still maintain that weight even though I did not skip or fast any meal. I reckon that if I reduce my intake, I could easily lose another 5 lbs. My family doctor approves!
There is a very unhealthy mentality in the US that exercise is the cure for obesity. It's easy to point out the flaw in this with simple math: count how many calories you burn running 3 miles or doing power lift, then compare to that of what you get from 2 slides of pizza or a big mac and you know what I mean. With our excessive food portion, you would need to run a marathon a day to keep up with the calories you take in.
I agree. My dad also died recently, as did my cousin in the US. Another cousin had a heart attack. Quite a few are obese. We are known to eat a lot. Part of it is that the parents came from extreme poverty and then got transplanted to the West.
After my dad died, I changed my diet. I ate a lot less, measured myself each day. When my cousin died, I moved more towards veggies. I'm 10kg down from the start of the year now.
Vegan diets are also easier to stay on, IMO. It fills you up to eat a load of broccoli or beetroots, but it's barely any calories. You also poop better, which is a strangely positive thing. As for taste, it seems to change when you know what killed your family members, and you get a bit more sensitive to the things you're not getting so much of, like salt and fats.
I do exercise regularly, but like you say there's no way that can be enough, you'd have to be doing professional athlete level workouts for it to matter. It's more that it's important to keep the muscles and skeleton used, and get the heart pumping. There's also the psychological effect, it feels good.
> sweets in America are like crack...I don't know what they put in it
They don't put sugar but some sugar-like substance. They can get away by calling it sugar nevertheless. Run this simple test - go to an Indian store & buy Cadbury's Milk Chocolate. This is the Cadbury's not manufactured in America, but imported from India. Now buy the same Cadbury's Milk Chocolate from the Candy aisle in any American supermarket. That's the garbage made right here in USA by Hershey (which owns Cadbury). The taste is different. The calories are different. The effect is different. And this isn't just me - a ton of people know this:
No wonder, it's incredibly hard to eat healthy food in some parts of the US. And many people seem to have no idea that their diet is terrible. I'm not even sure they link their obesity to their diet.
It's anecdotal evidence, but as a European frequently travelling in the US, I do have a hard time finding what I consider healthy food. I usually skip one meal each day and still put on weight. I suppose that if you're really careful and cook your own food at each meal you can get by, but all the incentives are there for you to eat a lot, and a lot of junk food.
"Food desert" mostly doesn't refer to eating out but being able to buy unprocessed food/produce/etc. which is hard to do if your only option is a convenience store. But there mostly are supermarkets available if not as plentiful or as good in low income areas.
I travel a lot in the US too though (as an American) and I've rarely (in cities) had much of an issue finding restaurants I consider good--though I'm not sure most meals I get on the road really qualify as "healthy" day after day either in the US or most other places. And, certainly, if you're looking for something quick and easy, that's probably going to be some fast food franchise. I almost universally avoid but that assumes putting some time and effort into finding better places when on the road.
Is there truth to the fact that there are many body types and that each body knows what the correct weight should be and they reach that weight by consuming what is necessary?
For example, when I diet and reduce weight, I gain it back in few months. May be I am meant to be at the higher weight. Many say that greedy corporations have set up the numbers for diabetes and it’s okay to have higher A1C.
Not really. You're probably gaining it back because you (presumably) think a diet is a one time thing. It's not, it must be maintained indefinitely, since it's just calories in vs calories out.
Nope. My understanding is that fat cells do not go away initially but just shrink. That is why it is easy to gain back recently lost weight. It takes a sustained effort to lose and keep off weight.
You're of course free to do what you want, but being overweight leads to health problems that you wouldn't otherwise have.
I live in the US. In passing I have noticed quite a bit about our culture which lends to being overweight.
1) Structure: it is way too easy to get food that is horrible for you. Not only that but in a way which you can eat it in the car on the way when you are only "slightly hungry".
2) Commercial interests: Go into a Walmart and pay attention to the organization. Everything which makes you fatter (and therefore consume more) is directly in front of you and on the end of the aisles. You need to search for the healthy food, and for some reason in my experience their limited produce selection seems to spoil faster than other stores (how can my bananas be green and rotten at the same time?)
3) Rewarding excess: It is in vogue to be wasteful. Being able to live in excess and be wasteful is very popular in our culture this is not limited to food, just look at the flatscreen TV count in houses, large inefficient cars and houses, etc.
4) Exercise as an excuse: "I have a gym membership, I went this week...so I can eat an extra 3000 calories today" That coupled with the lack of walking from the car culture and you have a very low rate of calorie burn vs intake.
5) Sugar substitutes: Why does everything need sweetener? Does this sweetener have effects we don't know about? There have been studies that say it also causes obesity and diabetic issues. It is very common for people in this country to drink several "diet" sodas a day and using that as reason to allow themselves to have extra dessert/sweet things.
Just my observations, also, I fall into the overweight category even knowing these things and making efforts to not continue the path which I was brought up on. If I had not made an effort to change diet and exercise...who knows how big I would be.
3 really resonates. People tend to dramatically overestimate the number of calories they burn when exercising. You have to work really, really hard to burn more than 500 calories in an hour workout and most people probably burn more like 100-200 calories when they exercise. Then they go home and drink a 16oz double IPA that is 400 calories by itself.
6) Emotional support. I see less and less large people out and about and more mostly attractive people hanging outside over the past decade. I have to wonder if this is in part due to social media:
a) Less attractive people feel like they deserve less social status (not sure if this is a USA-specific cultural thing but it's definitely a thing here)
b) Because of point a, spend more online because of the heightened feeling of not deserving of making friends
c) Social media is absolute junk, the more time you spend on it naturally the worse you're going to feel
d) Feedback loop of spending more time online, feeling bad, spending less time outside with physical contact causing worse physical health, causing even more time spent online, repeat for decades
More attractive people are naturally going to feel more deserving of love and emotional support and more likely to seek it out because of our culture, despite really we should all feel equally deserving of love and support. But this feedback mechanism I think exists breaks that feeling of deserving mental/physical fitness which is causes awful mental/physical fitness.
There is a lead cause which is unregulated capitalism. Food corporations are becoming more and more efficient at selling lot of low-quality food, which ultimately ends up in people's bodies.
> WHY ARE REPORTED NATIONAL OBESITY RATES HIGHER THAN STATE-BY-STATE RATES?
How is it that only 12 states have adult obesity rates exceeding
35 percent, yet the national obesity rate is 42.4 percent?
It’s because state obesity rates are from the BRFSS, which
collects self-reported height and weight. Research has
demonstrated that people tend to overestimate their height and
underestimate their weight. In fact, one study found that, due
to this phenomenon, the BRFSS may underestimate obesity
rates by nearly 10 percent.256 NHANES, from which the national
obesity rate is derived, calculates its obesity rate based on
measurements obtained at respondents’ physical examinations.
Accordingly, the higher rates found by NHANES are a more
accurate reflection of obesity in the United States.257
The ability to quickly and efficiently store fat would definitely have been a positive trait under multigenerational "feast or famine" conditions. But not so much for our relatively recent "perpetual feast" largess...
I find it interesting that I scrolled through this whole thread and there has been little if any discussion of excessively poor health care in the United States.
Also, things like how when people develop type 2 diabetes, the solution is often getting them on expensive insulin that causes weight gain, causing more insulin need, causing more weight gain etc. Look up Dr. Jason Fung for detailed information on how the typical approach to diabetes management actually just makes it, and weight gain, much worse.
Speaking of healthcare in the US, even for those who can afford a doctor -- I personally have gone to the doctor when I had unexplained blood sugar drops and weight gain despite being active (training for a century ride at the time), counting calories and eating the oft-touted '5 small meals a day'. They scoffed at me, told me they 'couldn't give me a pill to make me thin,' told me my habits were fine and I should keep doing what I was doing. As it turned out, and I learned through my own research, my frequent eating was causing me to become insulin resistant, and once I moved to 2 meals a day and a longer fast overnight my issues reversed. From talking to others there was nothing unusual about my experience with the doctor -- in the US obesity is considered a moral issue and not a health one, and our doctors have very little to offer in terms of advice based on the underlying mechanisms of obesity or taking patients seriously when they are concerned about weight gain.
We have all sorts of other things contributing to causing metabolic issues in the first place -- our poorly regulated food and ag industries have been pushing completely warped ideas of what makes a 'balanced' diet for decades -- e.g. milk and empty carbohydrates are 'a balanced breakfast,' the low fat fiasco where processed foods with reduced fat and increased sugars were touted as 'healthier', and for decades kids were taught in school the 'food pyramid' which was a suggested diet written entirely by agriculture lobbyists rather than the available science on nutrition.
We have an entire populace who, if they know anything about what is actually healthy for humans, came by it through having to seek it out themselves and wade through a lot of junk science sponsored by various corporate interests.
Also we are stuck in cycles of constant work, presenteeism and long hours in sedentary jobs, no sick leave, little if any vacation, etc. etc. where Europe etc. have much better work practices, not to mention less car culture, walk and bikeable and transitable cities, all things that are aggressively opposed in the US.
The problem is fueled by a number of systems. Imagining it to be a matter of simple will power or portion size is inane.
For anyone else who doesn't keep up with this, it seems at least some of Chile's efforts[1] have survived the years US food industry lobbying, lawsuits, and advertising, and have had some effect.[2] Brasil[3]... perhaps has more pressing problems now.
Global push-back on Investor-State Dispute Settlement seems to have throttled it's growth, and I don't quickly find any cases on food-health regulation (though there's little transparency on threats of cases).
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] thread0: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/adult/defining.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896802/#:~:tex....
If you are 1.70 m and have a BMI of above 30, your weight is more than 86.7 kg.
For obese people who are 1.80 m, your weight is more than 97.2 kg.
42% is an absolutely insane number of obese people - what on earth is going on?
They're classifying obesity as having a BMI >= 30.
https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityR...
Page 8 defines "Overweight" as BMI 25+ and "Obesity" as 30+.
People are either doing no physical activity, or they're doing triathlons.
People either have multiple degrees, or they didn't finish high-school.
People either buy a house in their early 20s, or they're renting all their lives.
People either read a book a week, or they never read a book at all.
(Obviously there are practically many people in between these extremes and people are free to do whatever they want and many people are happy and successful on both sides of each of these spectrums.)
Source: https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/adult-obesity/
Fascinating.
A distinction that doesn't really matter right?
In one example, I think it's good that clothing websites will show people in their clothes that look like their larger customers. I think it's good that this is less jarring to see due to prevalence alone. There was little utility for the polar opposite at size 0 and size 2 to model for everything, aside from overvaluing the addictiveness of frustration.
It still remains accurate to point out the health issues associated with obesity and the folly of remaining in that state.
I think it does, because it's more insidious than any sort of active movement. Are websites showing plus sized models because they want to be body positive or just because that's who research shows buys their clothing.
> It still remains accurate to point out the health issues associated with obesity and the folly of remaining in that state.
Absolutely - it's a danger, I'm not saying it's not.
My point is that you can change the narrative of a movement much more easily than you can change how a society as a whole unthinkingly deals with something. A deliberate normalization has a voice which can change what it's saying, this phenomena really doesn't.
I think websites are showing plus sized models because the movements told them "look at your customer analytics instead of assuming the status quo of people imagining they'll look like size 0 models when they wear this"
It is all very interrelated from my perspective.
If I did have an opinion I would say that a more collaborate and holistic approach with a movement's narrative is possible and necessary. For example, if some people to go to the extreme of wanting magazines to make disclaimers that models are photoshopped to help people in all BMI ranges have higher self esteem, then people normalizing unhealthy but common BMI ranges should also have disclaimers about the issues associated with remaining in that state.
There is a scientific consensus that being obese reduces your life expectancy.
This is obviously a very delicate issue. We surely don't want people to be shamed or ashamed for being overweight. Nothing good comes from shame.
But there is serious mortality and morbidity associated with obesity. And as a society, we don't seem to have much of a problem shaming people who fall into other risk categories such as smoking or drug use.
While this may seem harsh at a surface level, are you really sure nothing good comes from shame? Is shame always an unhealthy emotion to experience? It seems to me that it is effective in focusing attention on potential personal misjudgement or misbehavior, and can strengthen resolve to break bad habits or otherwise ensure a better outcome for oneself going forward.
But no emotion is inherently destructive. We should feel shame at certain things. If you tripped an old lady and didn’t feel shame, I’d say you were a psychopath, or if you simply threatened to kill anyone who you didn’t like.
It’s also notable that absence of shame is characteristic of psychopathy, and even Buddhist psychology states that an absence of shame is an impediment to enlightenment.
I completely support the idea that excessive or inappropriate shame is a major part of many if not most psychological disorders. Nothing supports the idea that all shame is destructive.
On the topic of obesity, I do agree that shame is unlikely to help. In fact I suspect that shame is more likely to be part of the cause.
For a behaviour trait to exist in species far from each other in the evolutionary tree suggests there is a real survival benefit to having it.
Doesn't mean it is beneficial in all cases, or that it doesn't feel shit though!
Many people call that shaming. This distinction isn't as clear as you suggest.
Do we? Society as a whole benefits from shaming alcoholics, smokers, people who beat their kids etc.
You're right, the science refutes being fat but the parent was wondering if any science supports being fat.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/14/912029399/we-had-to-take-acti... (NPR: 'We Had To Take Action': States In Mexico Move To Ban Junk Food Sales To Minors)
The same can be said about most western Europe countries, yet they still have obesity rates above 20% compared to 4% in Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
>But do go on about fat shaming being effective.
It looks like the most likely explanation here.
Why not? It works. Are you more concerned with someones feelings than their heart health? When they pass at a young age will their loved ones at their funeral think "wow, at least nobody ever hurt their feelings"?
Have you got some evidence for that because it sounds dubious to me.
The more people are exposed to weight bias and discrimination, the more likely they are to gain weight and become obese, even if they were thin to begin with. They’re also more likely to die from any cause, regardless of their body mass index (BMI).
Fat shaming is also linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, eating disorders and exercise avoidance, Alberga said. There’s emerging evidence that the severity of harm increases when people internalize weight bias and turn it on themselves. In one study, participants with high levels of internalization of weight-bias had three times greater odds of having metabolic syndrome than those with low levels, even after controlling for BMI and other risk factors
There is also a huge difference between sharing candid concerns about someone's weight when you already know them and can be somewhat compassionate about it and shaming a random person you don't know.
There's a lot of middle ground between body shaming and telling people with a BMI of 40+ that they are "fine the way they are", I think.
While it may not be an effective means of changing their behavior it is a valid means of framing conversations around what is desirable and healthy. If we continue to allow peoples feelings about how they feel override what we objectively know to be good we will be on the fast train to hell.
“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
This is a weird trope. Most models are selected to be slender so they can, basically, simulate a clothes rack. No curves to draw attention!
I'm not sure the fashion industry is telling anyone this is ideal. I can't remember, in my lifetime, when skinny models were ever really looked at by society-at-large as the "right" body type. They were always seen as "skinny models". Of course there are people with all sorts of preferences, but the most celebrated models of my youth (say, Heidi Klum or Tara Banks) were relatively fit as opposed to withering.
On the other hand, many people (both men and women) end up with eating disorders trying to reach this "ideal".
But we do have to recognize the effects that are also had on people, your last sentence is a heavier weighting than your perception.
People have not been capable of separating an industry ideal from a non-industry related attractiveness ideal.
Individuals know what they like, visually and sexually. Individuals are also aware of what the seeming consensus of "should like" is, visually and sexually. Simple put, people know when other people are considered hot and what that looks like.
When such a large portion of the population is overweight it tends to indicate a systemic problem rather than one of individual choice.
My point here though is that it’s only a minority who “can’t help it, they were born that way”. Most would be able to overcome this issue if the dynamics were different.
I see the body positivity movement as just trying to reconcile that reality. If you are already obese then you might as well try and find a way to live a happy life because you are probably never going to be slender again.
There's no problem to solve other than being more cognizant of the costs obesity will impose on one as an individual.
Now run the numbers again with socialized healthcare. When society's tax dollars are funding your triple bypass from your 30+ BMI it's absolutely societies business.
The "obese-normalization" you speak is about fat-shaming abolitionism, against discrimination in professional and social spaces because of body composition, not that such a body type is necessarily encouraged.
Furthermore the categorization of "obese", and BMI in general, has a pile of research exposing all the caveats and encouraged more granular diagnoses around mass composition for humans. You can be categorized as obese and have perfectly fine physical function. For example, pretty much every football player is overweight, most are obese. BMI charts are only a cursory step towards a proper analysis.
If you understand that obesity comes from a medical or mental condition, then a culture of fat-shaming is comparable to having a culture of shaming those suffering from PTSD or depression or birth abnormalities, et al. That sort of culture doesn't have many positive societal effects beyond pushing people into mental duress about things they are still trying to figure out how to manage. Any hyper-normalization of extreme obesity is a side effect of the propensity of such a shaming culture as it becomes more of a political statement than a medical one (or more fringe culture i.e kinks).
Being against removing this discrimination from our culture only makes sense if you believe that an effective methodology for overcoming a health problem is by being abused by society into action conformity.
Simply, if you're too fat you should be allowed to deal with that very personal issue on your own terms and not be ostracized from professional or social spaces.
The main aspect is a demonization of fatty foods, propagandized heavily by the sugar and soft drink industry, which market realities have shifted food products to compensate for the lack of flavor and satiation from fat by loading them with sugar. This is all compounded by massive corn subsidies in the US making it extremely tempting to load up recipes with cheap, sweet, calorie dense, corn syrup. (some random chart after quick search about this https://imgur.com/nvWRyrh)
Everything in this HuffPo article rings completely true for me -https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-y...
A carnivore diet that avoids plant-based foods altogether is ideal for human health and is almost impossible to remain obese on.
For faster or more thorough weight loss cut out dairy as well. Find more information at https://MeatRx.com/
> MeatRx.com
Those are some bold claims. Curious if there's any actual science supporting not eating plants.
In fact, entire human societies have survived for generations on entirely animal-based diets but a human being cannot even survive on a diet devoid of animal-based foods (vegans have to supplement or else they die).
There is a list of books here: https://meatrx.com/resources/books/
I personally find the writing and lectures of Nina Teicholz to be especially compelling.
https://meatrx.com/category/research-articles/
https://meatrx.com/resources/books/
Not all of the resources I pointed you to are about ketogenic diets, though -- some are about carnivore diets. For instance, there are the books of Vilhjalmur Stefansson who lived for years on a meat-only diet and was monitored at Harvard while on this diet.
Nina Teicholz also provides a phenomenal tour of the literature and demonstrates that a lot of the science does in fact support a carnivore diet. You should look up some of her phenomenal lectures on YouTube, or read her book The Big Fat Surprise: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...
If you would like to contribute to getting more research done on the carnivore diet, then you can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/carnivore-research
I'm also not really sure why I would donate money to a cause I do not believe in/that is not backed by science.
The problem with plant-based foods is that they contain fiber and a bunch of anti-nutrients but the ketogenic diet permits this. Once you cut out all plant-based food then you experience the wonders of an elimination diet -- because you have eliminated anything in your food that you might have a mild allergy or reaction to.
Things I noticed when I went carnivore were: improved skin, improved nasal breathing, cessation of heartburn, improved bowel movements, dramatically fewer bowel movements, weight loss and muscle growth, a complete cessation of farting/gas, more ear wax, less joint pain, less water weight (because no carbohydrates), more stable energy and mood, and probably a couple more things I've forgotten.
It is true that there are not a lot of studies that have been performed on the carnivore diet. But beware that human nutrition is almost impossibly difficult to do large randomized controlled trials on. This is simply an extraordinarily difficult area in which to get the science right, which is why the US dietary guidelines are such a bunch of crap and we've ended up with an obesity epidemic and chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease absolutely rampant.
There is one way in which you can perform elite nutrition science, however -- you can experiment on yourself. I urge you to try a carnivore diet for six weeks and just observe the results. Stick to steak, eggs, sardines, fish, bone broth, beef liver, and ground beef. Avoid dairy and don't drink any calories. This is an extraordinarily difficult diet for people to follow for some reason (because they are carb addicts) but it is nutritionally overflowing and you will see dramatic effects if you stick to it.
I am asking you to support this claim with science-based research, that explicitly studies the differences. The rest of your post is mostly just noise if that research isn't readily available.
I am more than aware of the troubles of doing legitimate scientific research at scale on diet. And yet, you yourself were able to provide scholarly articles on the benefits of a Ketogenic diet.
I have done both carnivore and generalized ketogenic diets in the past. I am also an extreme skeptic at fad diets like the Carnivore diet. I've yet to see a single piece of legitimate evidence to suggest that the Carnivore diet is anything more than a Joe Rogan-backed ketogenic diet.
> I have done both carnivore and generalized ketogenic diets in the past.
> What's the downside to eating nothing but eggs, sardines, and ground beef for six weeks?
Probably wasting six weeks of my life eating an unnecessary and suboptimal diet, for starters.
When you eat a steak almost the entire steak is absorbed into the body -- there is no indigestible fiber and other gunk that needs to be pooped out.
If you quit plants cold turkey and immediately switch over to a high-fat meat diet then you will have to prepare yourself for about a week of runny stool as your digestion adjusts. It's not a big deal and once you're in the clear it is smoother sailing than you knew was possible.
It is noteworthy that India has a massive problem with diabetes and also has the lowest life expectancy in the world.
India is 145th out of 201 nations measured [1]. Not great, but it's not the lowest as claimed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
I get it, you're trying to sell individuals on a red meat fad, but as a national strategy it's senseless.
Whole grains, fruits, vegetables (and sure meat too) are time and time again show to be healthy components of the human diet. Just cutting out the sugar, white flour, and trans fats will take you a long ways.
And I'm not sure why you think whole grains have "time and time again" been shown to be healthy components of the human diet. In fact, we have known for hundreds of years that grain-based human societies have suffered shorter stature, more disease, and more dental cavities than hunter-gatherer societies.
The ancient Egyptians, for instance, had lots of heart disease, as we can detect from their mummies, and they had an agricultural civilization based on grains grown in the Nile delta.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/surprise-ancient-inu...
And the Masai, another population eating an animal-heavy diet.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/95/1/26/167903
All the examples of exceptionally long-lived populations we have (the so-called blue zones) have a plant heavy (but not vegan/vegetarian) diet.
Seems like this must be different (or old) data by State?
> How is it that only 12 states have adult obesity rates exceeding 35 percent, yet the national obesity rate is 42.4 percent? It’s because state obesity rates are from the BRFSS, which collects self-reported height and weight. Research has demonstrated that people tend to overestimate their height and underestimate their weight. In fact, one study found that, due to this phenomenon, the BRFSS may underestimate obesity rates by nearly 10 percent. NHANES, from which the national obesity rate is derived, calculates its obesity rate based on measurements obtained at respondents’ physical examinations. Accordingly, the higher rates found by NHANES are a more accurate reflection of obesity in the United States.
https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityR...
And when people wonder what I mean: I tell them "Its like the Freshmen 15, except its the weight gained from COVID19 lockdowns".
Although more seriously, when I gained ~5 lbs, I started to eat healthier, and shed that weight back down to my normal <180lbs. For 5'10, I'm still slightly overweight by BMI (and I'm not very lean or strong, so I doubt its muscle).
I would love to see stats on weight change over the population.
The only positive difference I can identify is that I eat out 0 times a week now instead of 2-3.
The part about how 12 states have averages above 35%... didn't make sense to me if the national average is 42. Maybe I missed something.
[0] https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
Also, a note: not everyone can eat a meat-heavy diet. I cannot. I don't have a gall bladder - like many others - and cannot digest the fats well. Eggs are too much sometimes.
Not only that, but you can eat perfectly healthy without actual meat. Low quality foods - meatless or not - generally have a lot of empty calories and aren't very filling, making it easier to gain weight.
I would argue that the answer is the nutrient to calorie ratio. Many nutrients for few calories is good, but few nutrients for many calories is bad. By this analysis, plant-based food is "low quality" and animal-based food is "high quality".
So if calories are what make you gain weight then it makes sense that people following a plant-based diet would gain weight compared to people following an animal-based diet because they will need to consume more calories to acquire the same amount of nutrients.
The main reason folks lose weight on meat-heavy diets is because they tend to eat less and therefore eat fewer calories. But there is more than one path to eating fewer calories. Lentils and beans tend and some vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which keep you full longer and tend to mean you eat less. Not to mention that a plate full of vegetables and beans tends to have fewer calories than a plate of meat - and hold a variety of nutrients as well.
You are correct when you state at the beginning of your second paragraph that people on meat-heavy diets tend to eat fewer calories. But you are incorrect when you state at the end of that paragraph that a plate full of plant food will have fewer calories than a plate of meat. If this were true, then people on meat-heavy diets must not be finishing their plates of food, since they end up consuming fewer calories.
As for your own diet, it's a good thing you have the eggs and cheese in there! That's where your vital nutrition is coming from. The rice and beans and veggies are just keeping you alive with calories but not carrying their weight in terms of nutrition. You could be doing worse, such as eating a bunch of bread and pasta, or even worse than that, soda and candy, but you could also be doing much better by eating mostly steak and sardines.
* Not being sure that the next meal is coming means you have to pack on some lbs to reach the point where you can go a few days without a square meal.
* The not actually getting the next meal makes you ravenously hungry when it comes even if on average you're overeating. It's why people with EDs aren't automatically skinny -- if you restrict and then binge you can/will gain weight.
https://www.strongerbyscience.com has an article somewhere on this, and it's not well tested yet, but we're starting to see some scientific evidence to back this up.
The question is whether the effect is large enough to actually matter. And maybe it does, maybe there is a magic diet that allows you to eat well above your TDEE without gaining weight but nobody has found it yet.
This is a very bad meme. There's many factors that influence how much weight you may gain besides calories consumed. At the more obvious end of the spectrum, if you eat corn, and poop out undigested corn, that's definitely not a calorie nor a calorie nor a calorie.
Every diet that’s effective is CACO. Use whatever structure you need to actually accomplish it. If it means no carbs, vegetarianism, Atkins, WeightWatchers then good on you. Calorie tracking is a bitch and if you have a rule of thumb that works for you then enjoy it.
For what it's worth, here are two peer-reviewed articles that contradict that idea. The thermodynamic truism that "a calorie is a calorie" is true because it's a tautology, but misses the point almost entirely.
EDIT: "a calorie is a calorie" is about as useful and relevant as saying "the key is to earn more than you spend" in the context of trying to save money, or raise yourself out of poverty. Technically absolutely true, but woefully unhelpful.
---
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639963/
"Diets high in protein and/or low in carbohydrate produced an ≈2.5-kg greater weight loss after 12 wk of treatment. Neither macronutrient-specific differences in the availability of dietary energy nor changes in energy expenditure could explain these differences in weight loss."
---
2. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/899S/4690223
"Over a million calories are consumed a year yet weight changes to only a small extent; there must be mechanisms that balance energy intake and expenditure. As obesity reflects only a small malfunctioning of these mechanisms, there is a need to understand the control of energy balance and how to prevent the regaining of weight after it has been lost. By itself, decreasing calorie intake will have a limited short-term influence."
#1 agrees with me!
Their entire theory is that different macro balances lead people to eat less because they're more satiating. Which is true but doesn't contradict the point that the actual thing that matters is CICO. Certain diets may make it easier or harder in terms of willpower but it doesn't change the underlying forces.
#2 agrees with me too! That abstract is criminally misleading.
> We conclude that a calorie is a calorie. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, this is clear because the human body or, indeed, any living organism cannot create or destroy energy but can only convert energy from one form to another. In comparing energy balance between dietary treatments, however, it must be remembered that the units of dietary energy are metabolizable energy and not gross energy. This is perhaps unfortunate because metabolizable energy is much more difficult to determine than is gross energy.
and
> Of course, the increased energy expenditure associated with increased protein intake also does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, because the energy is conserved. It does, however, come close to the spirit of the argument that a calorie is not a calorie, because feeding diets that induce a difference in energy expenditure can introduce a difference in energy balance and thus a difference in weight loss. Of the macronutrients, only protein has been found to have this effect, but the magnitude of this effect is small and perhaps accounts for a 0.8-kg difference in weight loss between diet treatments over 12 wk
If this is your argument then we're just arguing semantics. The only thing that matters is energy expenditure and total metabolized energy intake (which is CICO!). Like people already understand that our bodies metabolize foods differently (like the meme about celery being negative calories) but broadly following the standard nutrition info is a damn good proxy on average for metabolized energy.
> is true because it's a tautology, but misses the point almost entirely.
I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake. If you're not losing weight you need to eat less and exercise more and vice versa if you want to gain weight. There's really nothing else to it. Every diet just provides some structure that makes the process easier since our bodies don't like it.
It's not though. That's not what the papers are saying. They're saying a calorie is a calorie. But calories turned into long term fat reserves are not equal to calories put in mouth - calories used in exercise. You can change the outcome of your diet by changing the composition of your diet while holding total calories the same.
* total energy intake and expenditure are the only things that really matter for weight loss
* for some foods, there is a difference between the nutrition info listed calories and the metabolized calories
Which implies what you're saying. If you play with your diet you can potentially keep the nutrition info listed calories constant while reducing your "real" energy intake.
This feels like semantics because all you're really saying is that commonly understood nutrition info is inaccurate (which is true -- hell nutrition labels are allowed by the FDA to be off by 20%). In a perfect world with perfect information counting calories would be counting metabolized calories. But unless you're raising cattle on narrow diets the problem ranges from hard to impossible for real food. So the normal calorie counts that dieters use acts as a proxy and if done right, a rough upper bound.
This is the crux of what I think misses the point so entirely that you might not see it: "the point" is to figure out how to lose weight (and keep it off while being healthy). Beating on the dead horse of thermodynamic laws is utterly irrelevant to the question of which macronutrients have what effect on body fat and bodyweight.
As I wrote in my edit, "a calorie is a calorie" is exactly as useful as dieting advice as "just spend less and earn more" is useful budgeting advice. The advice-giver can feel satisfied that they've emphasized a physical-mathematical truth, without realizing that they haven't actually done anything to help.
Well yeah, and finding a good macro balance is huge positive for your overall health. But beating the dead horse of technicalities about how our bodies metabolize different foods a little differently is utterly irrelevant to the question of how much energy am I intaking (and metabolizing) and how much am I expending which is the only thing that has any meaningful effect on body fat and body weight unless your already fit and doing athletic training.
There's lots of good advice on dieting: eating high-volume foods, keeping track of satiation, staying hydrated, eating slower, staving off cravings by not quitting foods cold turkey, focusing on exercises that have a good kcal/time ratio, understanding the process model for self-control and managing your willpower. But all of it has the singular goal and of making net calorie expenditure positive and what tricks and rules of thumb that work for people is personal and situation dependent.
Telling someone to adjust their macros as dieting advice is setting them up for failure unless you happen to already know that the result of their adjustments will put them in a deficit. It's really hard to help people who are doing some diet like keto, aren't losing weight, and end up frustrated because "it's supposed to work." But when you estimate their TDEE and count their calories the problem becomes super obvious.
In the dietary sense, calories are NOT equal. It's easy to change a person's body mass by changing their diet while keeping calories the same. Mixing simple carbohydrates with fat is an effective way to get our metabolism to generate body fat. Simple carbohydrates in general, really, since our body is forced to process them into fat quickly or else our blood pH reaches harmful levels.
Repeating "a calorie is a calorie" is harmful for people considering their diet, and a truism if you're speaking to a physicist. In either case, not helpful.
I do not deny that it is probably possible to min max your diet and exploit some of our bodies weirdness. But on a macro scale none of that shit matters. If you run a caloric deficit it literally does not matter in the slightest what your body does to the food: it can store in fat, it can burn it immediately no matter what your body is still going to have to burn all of its reserves to operate.
The first line states: "The U.S. adult obesity rate passed the 40 percent mark for the first time, standing at 42.4 percent"
Then just a couple of paragraphs later: "Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate in the country at 40.8 percent and Colorado has the lowest at 23.8 percent. Twelve states have adult rates above 35 percent."
It is impossible for the national obesity rate to be 42.4 percent if no state has an obesity rate above 40.8 percent.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/the-messy...
Second, we need better food labeling. "Serving size" is too arbitrary. Instead use ratios: ratio per N calories, and ratio per weight. That way we can easily compare across product types. It can be worded as "X units per N calories" and "X units per gram", or the like. The units would be standardized.
Third, include percent of whole-ness of grain. It's hard to know otherwise. We need to eat more whole grains, but 100% is not very tasty to most such that a mix is decent compromise. But we need better numbers to know the mix percent.
In Europe labels need to have nutritional information using standard units (e.g. 100g or 100ml). It seems very odd they don't require that in the US too.
At the same time, most travellers will tell you the food was delicious. This may be good for keeping customers happy, but it's going to tend to mean things that our hunter gatherer ancestors wanted to stock up on, in quantities they would rarely find.
Finally, sweets and junk food in America are like crack. I don't know what they put in it, but just about everything in that category is more enticing than the same categories in Europe.
My brother had a six pack before he moved there. Now he has a beer belly.
Sometimes I still like to eat out, but it's a rare treat, I can't do it every day like I used to when I was younger. Even then, I'll usually look for the junior portions, which are plenty filling.
Americans love bulk purchase discounts. Contrast that to time I spent in France where seemingly invariably larger packages would cost more per quantity than smaller ones. Seeing that did weird things to my brain.
Do you generally have doggy-bags (leftovers carry-out) outside the US? The portions sizes are large for a few reasons: 1) pricing needs to stay high as rents are still high or the restaurant will fold (most do anyway). 2) people often take leftovers home
So you pay higher prices for more food, and a 2nd (or sometimes 3rd) meal at home.
I think the bigger issue is that due to sprawl and walk/bike-unfriendliness, people take their cars everywhere. As a part of COVID restrictions my family has started using bikes to things we would normally get in a car for - e.g. get takeout or library - but most people don't.
[1] https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-culture/french-doggy...
In most places I'd say you can get a doggy-bag, but unless it's because your kids won't eat, you won't. Unless you're going to take-away most of the meal, you probably won't need a box. People do sometimes not eat everything, but there's not a lot of point in saving two or three bites.
My sense is that most restaurants in the US could just charge more for the same, and people would just pay it. Perhaps the doggy-bag thing has changed expectations so that won't work, who knows.
I'm not sure cycling is going to fix obesity. If you're getting a meal that's 2x what it's supposed to be, which seems to be what happens in the US, and a normal meal at a restaurant is maybe 1000-1500 calories, cycling isn't gonna be enough to help you. For reference I can do maybe 10 calories a minute on my elliptical, and I can hold that pace for maybe an hour. And that's some workout, quite a lot harder than a bike ride.
Agree, but it helps. You can burn a few hundred kcal everyday with light exercise which helps to maintain a healthy weight. But of course, no realistic amount of exercise will help to compensate for a junk food diet (especially if you're already overweight and unable to exercise safely).
ETA: and they have free samples :)
Statements in this vein get made quite a bit. But, as someone who lives in the US and (normally) travels around Europe quite a bit, I'm at least a little bit skeptical. Certainly when I'm eating out in Europe I don't think to myself "My, what small portions." (Admittedly, in the US some meals come with a lot of cheap carbs like potatoes but that's hardly unknown in Europe in my experience as well.)
>Even the strawberries seem to be bigger.
That's mostly industrialized farming for you. If you buy locally grown strawberries in, say, New England in season, they're both much tastier and smaller.
Last time I went to london though, the obesity problem was looking bad.
One other point I want to make is that young people in europe do tend to look healthier than young people in america, I believe the food quality and standards/lower supply of fast food franchises helps alot. Quick food in europe tends to offer healthier and higher quality options.
>could it be that city life is more conductive to staying thin
Maybe? I'm not sure most people walk enough in a city on a day-to-day basis going into an office to really move the needle. And they're probably eating out more and cooking at home less than they would if they had to hop in a car and drive somewhere. Which certainly can lead to eating more than you want.
Indeed, some parts of Europe do have obesity problems too. England obviously, but France is catching up. Junk food is getting increasingly pervasive. I think we're just lagging 10 years behind the US but we're getting there.
They are literally engineered this way and companies spend billions on the process.
Everyone should read the book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (2014)
https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129...
This is because Americans will typically drive to the supermarket and can carry a lot of stuff home, while Europeans will take public transport or walk, and can't carry as much.
Additionally houses in Europe are a lot smaller and they just don't have room to store so much, while in America houses tend to be larger (at least if you're not in a dense city).
If anybody in the US thinks like you, we shouldn't have a problem with weight. After my dad passed away from a massive stroke, my revelation is that to combat obesity "you could eat most food, in reasonable amount, exercise wisely". I say most because for people with pre-existing conditions, some kind of food you are to avoid.
I'm tired of all of the diet tricks out there. At some point, my weight is going back up again. But, for the last year or so, I eat less meat/dairy and more of the veggie/tofu. I lost 10 lbs and still maintain that weight even though I did not skip or fast any meal. I reckon that if I reduce my intake, I could easily lose another 5 lbs. My family doctor approves!
There is a very unhealthy mentality in the US that exercise is the cure for obesity. It's easy to point out the flaw in this with simple math: count how many calories you burn running 3 miles or doing power lift, then compare to that of what you get from 2 slides of pizza or a big mac and you know what I mean. With our excessive food portion, you would need to run a marathon a day to keep up with the calories you take in.
After my dad died, I changed my diet. I ate a lot less, measured myself each day. When my cousin died, I moved more towards veggies. I'm 10kg down from the start of the year now.
Vegan diets are also easier to stay on, IMO. It fills you up to eat a load of broccoli or beetroots, but it's barely any calories. You also poop better, which is a strangely positive thing. As for taste, it seems to change when you know what killed your family members, and you get a bit more sensitive to the things you're not getting so much of, like salt and fats.
I do exercise regularly, but like you say there's no way that can be enough, you'd have to be doing professional athlete level workouts for it to matter. It's more that it's important to keep the muscles and skeleton used, and get the heart pumping. There's also the psychological effect, it feels good.
They don't put sugar but some sugar-like substance. They can get away by calling it sugar nevertheless. Run this simple test - go to an Indian store & buy Cadbury's Milk Chocolate. This is the Cadbury's not manufactured in America, but imported from India. Now buy the same Cadbury's Milk Chocolate from the Candy aisle in any American supermarket. That's the garbage made right here in USA by Hershey (which owns Cadbury). The taste is different. The calories are different. The effect is different. And this isn't just me - a ton of people know this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/cadbury-chocolate-different-...
Agreed. My wife and I typically get an appetizer and split a dish at restaurants. In lieu of having to pay for another meal we typically tip nicely.
It's anecdotal evidence, but as a European frequently travelling in the US, I do have a hard time finding what I consider healthy food. I usually skip one meal each day and still put on weight. I suppose that if you're really careful and cook your own food at each meal you can get by, but all the incentives are there for you to eat a lot, and a lot of junk food.
I travel a lot in the US too though (as an American) and I've rarely (in cities) had much of an issue finding restaurants I consider good--though I'm not sure most meals I get on the road really qualify as "healthy" day after day either in the US or most other places. And, certainly, if you're looking for something quick and easy, that's probably going to be some fast food franchise. I almost universally avoid but that assumes putting some time and effort into finding better places when on the road.
For example, when I diet and reduce weight, I gain it back in few months. May be I am meant to be at the higher weight. Many say that greedy corporations have set up the numbers for diabetes and it’s okay to have higher A1C.
You're of course free to do what you want, but being overweight leads to health problems that you wouldn't otherwise have.
1) Structure: it is way too easy to get food that is horrible for you. Not only that but in a way which you can eat it in the car on the way when you are only "slightly hungry".
2) Commercial interests: Go into a Walmart and pay attention to the organization. Everything which makes you fatter (and therefore consume more) is directly in front of you and on the end of the aisles. You need to search for the healthy food, and for some reason in my experience their limited produce selection seems to spoil faster than other stores (how can my bananas be green and rotten at the same time?)
3) Rewarding excess: It is in vogue to be wasteful. Being able to live in excess and be wasteful is very popular in our culture this is not limited to food, just look at the flatscreen TV count in houses, large inefficient cars and houses, etc.
4) Exercise as an excuse: "I have a gym membership, I went this week...so I can eat an extra 3000 calories today" That coupled with the lack of walking from the car culture and you have a very low rate of calorie burn vs intake.
5) Sugar substitutes: Why does everything need sweetener? Does this sweetener have effects we don't know about? There have been studies that say it also causes obesity and diabetic issues. It is very common for people in this country to drink several "diet" sodas a day and using that as reason to allow themselves to have extra dessert/sweet things.
Just my observations, also, I fall into the overweight category even knowing these things and making efforts to not continue the path which I was brought up on. If I had not made an effort to change diet and exercise...who knows how big I would be.
6) Emotional support. I see less and less large people out and about and more mostly attractive people hanging outside over the past decade. I have to wonder if this is in part due to social media:
a) Less attractive people feel like they deserve less social status (not sure if this is a USA-specific cultural thing but it's definitely a thing here)
b) Because of point a, spend more online because of the heightened feeling of not deserving of making friends
c) Social media is absolute junk, the more time you spend on it naturally the worse you're going to feel
d) Feedback loop of spending more time online, feeling bad, spending less time outside with physical contact causing worse physical health, causing even more time spent online, repeat for decades
More attractive people are naturally going to feel more deserving of love and emotional support and more likely to seek it out because of our culture, despite really we should all feel equally deserving of love and support. But this feedback mechanism I think exists breaks that feeling of deserving mental/physical fitness which is causes awful mental/physical fitness.
p26 answers a question I had:
> WHY ARE REPORTED NATIONAL OBESITY RATES HIGHER THAN STATE-BY-STATE RATES?
How is it that only 12 states have adult obesity rates exceeding 35 percent, yet the national obesity rate is 42.4 percent? It’s because state obesity rates are from the BRFSS, which collects self-reported height and weight. Research has demonstrated that people tend to overestimate their height and underestimate their weight. In fact, one study found that, due to this phenomenon, the BRFSS may underestimate obesity rates by nearly 10 percent.256 NHANES, from which the national obesity rate is derived, calculates its obesity rate based on measurements obtained at respondents’ physical examinations. Accordingly, the higher rates found by NHANES are a more accurate reflection of obesity in the United States.257
Also, things like how when people develop type 2 diabetes, the solution is often getting them on expensive insulin that causes weight gain, causing more insulin need, causing more weight gain etc. Look up Dr. Jason Fung for detailed information on how the typical approach to diabetes management actually just makes it, and weight gain, much worse.
Speaking of healthcare in the US, even for those who can afford a doctor -- I personally have gone to the doctor when I had unexplained blood sugar drops and weight gain despite being active (training for a century ride at the time), counting calories and eating the oft-touted '5 small meals a day'. They scoffed at me, told me they 'couldn't give me a pill to make me thin,' told me my habits were fine and I should keep doing what I was doing. As it turned out, and I learned through my own research, my frequent eating was causing me to become insulin resistant, and once I moved to 2 meals a day and a longer fast overnight my issues reversed. From talking to others there was nothing unusual about my experience with the doctor -- in the US obesity is considered a moral issue and not a health one, and our doctors have very little to offer in terms of advice based on the underlying mechanisms of obesity or taking patients seriously when they are concerned about weight gain.
We have all sorts of other things contributing to causing metabolic issues in the first place -- our poorly regulated food and ag industries have been pushing completely warped ideas of what makes a 'balanced' diet for decades -- e.g. milk and empty carbohydrates are 'a balanced breakfast,' the low fat fiasco where processed foods with reduced fat and increased sugars were touted as 'healthier', and for decades kids were taught in school the 'food pyramid' which was a suggested diet written entirely by agriculture lobbyists rather than the available science on nutrition.
We have an entire populace who, if they know anything about what is actually healthy for humans, came by it through having to seek it out themselves and wade through a lot of junk science sponsored by various corporate interests.
Also we are stuck in cycles of constant work, presenteeism and long hours in sedentary jobs, no sick leave, little if any vacation, etc. etc. where Europe etc. have much better work practices, not to mention less car culture, walk and bikeable and transitable cities, all things that are aggressively opposed in the US.
The problem is fueled by a number of systems. Imagining it to be a matter of simple will power or portion size is inane.
Global push-back on Investor-State Dispute Settlement seems to have throttled it's growth, and I don't quickly find any cases on food-health regulation (though there's little transparency on threats of cases).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/health/obesity-chile-suga... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/chiles-drastic... paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil...