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<p>I think they have, but no one is listening. It’s much easier to suggest that people “stop eating like pigs.”</p>
<p>EK4:</p>
<p>I agree that school lunch programs should be overhauled to provide decent meals as opposed to what the kids ‘want’ to eat (pizza and other high fat/calorie items) and if the kid refuses to eat it then IMO the kid’s not exactly starving. Some districts are overhauling their programs.</p>
<p>My point was that school lunches are just one meal (well, more than that in some areas for low-income but that’s another story) for just part of a week and only part of a year and most of their meals will be consumed outside of that so even if they ate great school lunches, because that’s all the school would provide, they’re still in trouble when they eat outside of school. </p>
<p>Most kids also don’t ‘need’ to eat the school lunch. My kids never ate it - we spent the 3 or 4 minutes necessary to provide them with a bag lunch and this lunch wasn’t expensive, especially since it didn’t contain bags of tater chips, cookies, etc. I understand that not every kid has the luxury (??) of the bag lunch because the parents refuse to provide them one or in some cases might not be able to afford it (much less likely) but most of them do have the option financially, including a lot of kids who are fighting the weight issue. I guess it’s just easier on the parents to just hand the kid money than make a sandwich and put an apple in a paper bag.</p>
<p>The only way the issue can be addressed is by personal responsibility which for kids includes the parents since they’re the ones in control. There’s no other way it can be done. It can’t be regulated by laws, it can’t be taken care of by better school lunches, it can’t be taken care of by targeting FF places - the individual needs to exercise control. For most people this isn’t terribly difficult to pass up FF places, exercise control in any restaurant (basically 99% of all restaurants offer high calorie/sugared/salted foods), and start doing some physical exercise but it takes a bit of effort. For some people, they need to take control by educating themselves in the area which could help them a lot. Others can exercise control based on their own individual attributes which could include joining formal nutrition and exercise programs, consulting with doctors who specialize in this area, and for some people perhaps even resorting to surgery. And people shouldn’t necessarily target a particular ‘look’ since we all have different body types but they can target reasonable choices in their food and physical activity to be reasonable about it rather than an all or none approach. If they’re somewhat heavier than someone’s idea of ‘norm’ it’s usually not a big deal and just a normal variance in human body types (there are people on the flip side as well who are chronically underweight according to the designated norm). As long as they know they’re doing what’s reasonable they’re usually okay but some people’s idea of ‘reasonable’ is out of whack.</p>
<p>*** Spoiler Alert on the movie ‘Supersize Me’ ***
The person in the movie mentioned earlier embarked on a clearly unreasonable diet. It was pretty unrealistic but nevertheless showed the impact to the body if one let’s this area go unchecked. He consumed about 5000 calories a day on his McD largest meal diet for every meal versus his normal 2400 calories or so he ate prior to this when he was a ‘normal’ weight. In 30 days he went from around 185 to 210 - 25 pounds in 30 days! His blood chemistry went from normal to completely out of whack along with it. If you use the simple formula ‘interesteddad’ mentioned earlier about the roughly 3500 calories/pound of fat it actuall came out pretty close to that. There’s no way a person can consume that number of calories without a tremendous amount of physical activity and not gain weight. btw - once he stopped he went on some kind of ‘detox’ plan and then back to his normal diet. It took him 5 months to lose most of the weight and another 4 months for the last 4.5 pounds. It clearly goes on easier than it comes off.</p>
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<p>Bariatric surgery does change the hormone balance. In particular, Roux-en-Y surgery seems to dramatically decrease levels of ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone. Vertical band gastroplasty does not seem to decrease ghrelin, and it turns out to be a less successful kind of bariatric surgery in terms of losing weight and keeping it off.</p>
<p><a href=“http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/88/7/2999.full.pdf[/url]”>http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/88/7/2999.full.pdf</a></p>
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I agree with this and in posts on a thread like this one people (like me for example) can come across as over-simplifying a complex issue. There are also always extreme cases - like the Pima Indians of Arizona who have incredibly calorie-efficient bodies which worked great a hundred years ago when living off of the desert but doesn’t work well when there’s a Safeway and FF places across the street.</p>
<p>The solution needs to be geared towards the individual and we need to take care not to be too judgmental of others when we know nothing about them. </p>
<p>Given that, I think it’s hard to argue that there are simply too many people paying little to no attention to their diet and physical activity and that if they’d exercise reasonable controls they wouldn’t have the weight issues. This doesn’t aply to everyone but it does apply to most people.</p>
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<p>Well, ultimately it is responsible in all cases, since the food one eats is the only source of the calories that go into building fat. If you drive the calorie intake low enough, everyone will lose weight no matter what their metabolism. Consider the extreme of starvation scenarios - Biblical famines, shipwrecked sailors adrift in a lifeboat, or anorexia nervosa victims. Everyone gets skinny - no exceptions. And before they die they will get VERY skinny.</p>
<p>Of course I’m not advocating starvation. That’s the very worst method for losing weight. But it does illustrate the point that, no matter what your metabolism, fat and weight gain does ultimately derive from the food we eat. </p>
<p>In more the normal conditions of food abundance in which we currently live, it’s easy to see that not all people can gain or lose weight with the same metabolic efficiency. The challenge is to find one approach that works for you and your metabolism and stick with it. But it IS possible to maintain a healthy, normal weight no matter who you are or which genetic cards you’ve been dealt.</p>
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<p>EXACTLY. When you meet an obese person, you have NO IDEA why they are fat. They could be a glutton or sloth. Or they could be on drugs which are necessary which also cause weight gain, they could have hormonal imbalances, they could be insulin resistant/developing metabolic syndrome, etc., there could be a combination of factors. A friend of mine has a pituitary tumor which has caused her to suddenly gain weight. You would not know that if you met her and she likely would never mention it. She’s one of the most disciplined people I know, but some of you here would probably assume she just eats too damn much. Judgmental attitudes simply reflect bigotry and an unfounded sense of superiority.</p>
<p>I’ve been pretty slim most of my life. I’ve always just felt lucky, and the more I learn about this problem, the luckier I feel. As it is, perimenopause has arrived and without changing anything in my lifestyle, maintaining my weight has become more challenging. I haven’t suddenly started gorging myself.</p>
<p>A very educational read is How We Get Fat and What To Do About It, by Gary Taubes. Fascinating and debunks some of the nonsense still being spouted about obesity. I don’t agree with his solution necessarily (his own diet is just too extreme for me), but it is the science involved with weight which I found very compelling.</p>
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<p>And I would add, you are seriously kidding yourself if you believe you can assess how disciplined and healthy a person is by their weight. </p>
<p>Case in point:</p>
<p>-Hubby, 6 feet, 165 pounds, occasional runner, smokes, eats one meal a day, has high blood pressure and a serious neurological disorder. He’s sick all the time, BTW.</p>
<p>-SIL - never exercised a day in her life, very thin, eats choc chip cookies every day for breakfast and her diet goes downhill from there</p>
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<li>I have 5 women acquaintances who are all thin and bulimic. 4 of them rarely exercise. One is a marathon runner who has run in all 50 states. She has numerous health issues.</li>
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<p>-I have another friend who is so scared to death to get fat that she will only eat minuscule amounts of food and exercises 3-4 hours per day!</p>
<p>-A coworker, who is thin, has had lifelong thyroid issues (hyper). She loves to blast overweight people and, yet, she does zero exercise. Of course, she has no problem staying thin, she has hyperthyroidism.</p>
<p>My point is being thin is no indicator of health status. It is perhaps, more attractive but that’s basically it. It is true there is a correlation with obesity and certain health conditions like diabetes but there is also evidence that people who are overweight (but not obese) actually live longer than those who are thin.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to defend being overweight, I just think making statements like ‘it’s all a matter of discipline’ is very naive.</p>
<p>nrdsb4:</p>
<p>Yes, there are drugs that have known side effects of one gaining a lot of weight. Jerry Lewis ballooned up while on one of these drugs for some condition he had. </p>
<p>There are also studies about how some people’s brains don’t have the “I’m full” switch. While it’s hard for those of us who have this at a reasonable setting to understand how they couldn’t, it nevertheless is a factor, especially since eating is one of the most basic of animal instincts. </p>
<p>A lot of these are the small exceptions though and not related to the majority who are getting larger and larger due to man’s invention and industry combined with the instincual calorie-conservation built into most of us.</p>
<p>Anyone who truly wants to understand how weight is determined should really read Taubes’ book. There could be a great discussion thread on it.</p>
<p>Also, another entertaining follow up to Super Size Me can be viewed for free on Hulu. It is a documentary titled Fathead and is alternately hilarious and fascinating.</p>
<p>[Hulu</a> - Fat Head - Watch the full movie now.](<a href=“http://www.hulu.com/watch/196879/fat-head]Hulu”>http://www.hulu.com/watch/196879/fat-head)</p>
<p>You can’t really do KLC/keto when you are doing any kind of sustained cardiovascular activity beyond say 80-85%. There’s just no way to overcome the ketone inefficiency problem. Your performance on a LC diet will be worse than one where glucose is its primary source of fuel. (An isometric diet is actually pretty ideal)</p>
<p>Whomever said it didn’t matter…either doesn’t understand the science or just assumed she/he was operating at peak capacity when she/he was running. And yes, I have tried both ways when I played soccer. I’ve even tried CKD’s (Cyclical Ketogenic Diets) and TKD’s (Targeted Ketogenic Diets) in order to replenish glycogen stores in order to overcome glycogen depletion. No comparison really. Glucose based diets are far superior for optimal performance.</p>
<p>This is all so interesting. Dh comes from a heavy family & does well on a low carb diet (with excellent changes in his bp and cholesterol;) D1 has PCOS and borderline metabolic syndrome; she has always had an uber healthy diet high on veggies and no juices or sugared sodas and has struggled with her weight. D2 was my bigger baby but has been at about 5th percentile of weight since she was about 1; she eats baked goods and chicken nuggets out the wazoo and is responsible for consuming about 3 gallons of milk a week. So this idea of different bodies responding to different foods/diets plays out in front of my eyes on a daily basis. It’s so not fair to D1!</p>
<p>A couple of things I thought while reading through the thread:</p>
<p>1) My mom grew up in England. A few things that she’s told me over the years regarding food in that time and place: first, if she was ever caught eating anything on the street while she was a schoolgirl (for example, eating an apple on the way home) she would get demerits from the headmaster. It was unbecoming. Second, on a similar note, if she was going to someone’s house for dinner, her grandma would feed her before she left. She had a healthy appetite and her grandma didn’t want to be embarrassed by her appetite or have people think that she didn’t get fed appropriately at home. Little different than here, no?</p>
<p>2) On the Costco theory: I don’t ever really notice obese people in Costco the way that I do in say WalMart. If you shop in Costco, they carry a pretty high quality line of merchandise. It’s hard to get out of Costco cheaply (not saying that you can’t save a lot of money; I do) so if you’re trying to “eat cheap” it’s not the best way to do it. I save a lot on high quality meats, cheeses, fruits etc. None of which make people fat in moderation. Now in WalMart, it’s a different story. You can buy a lot of “filler” food for little money and make those tummies stop rumbling. </p>
<p>3) I’m finding that people don’t like to be connected to their bodies in the same way we used to be. Got a headache? Take an advil. Have some heartburn? Take a prilosec. Pregnant? Schedule that induction 8 months out. Obviously, I’m being somewhat of a Devil’s Advocate. All of those things are medically necessary in some cases, but not in the amount and percentages that are prevalent today. Do we even realize how we are supposed to feel? How different foods affect us?</p>
<p>The discussion of ‘assumptions’ cuts both ways though - there are a lot of overweight people who make the assumption that ‘normal’ weight people are just somehow that way - that those people don’t need to ‘work at it’ and this is a false assumption. I know I have to work at it more than some others but not as much as yet other people. If I didn’t ‘work’ at some control I’d definitely be more overwheight. By work I mean actively going out of my way to avoid FF, to make sure there are no chips and other garbage routinely in the house (or else I’m liable to eat them later at night), to do a pretty decent workout on a regular basis which by the way, is actually ‘work’ to do - i.e. it’s not as easy sitting in my lazyboy perusing CC. </p>
<p>Just from discussions I’ve had with some heavy people I think some of them let this assumption on their part get in their way sometimes - they figure ‘oh well, this is just the way I’m built unlike those normal weight people who don’t have a problem’. As the statistics of the ever-fattening America and world show, those assumptions aren’t accurate.</p>
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<p>That is not what Jeff Volek has found studying ultra-low carb diets and athletes at UConnn. He has found that most athletes, after a period of adaptation lasting a week or so, peform just fine. In most cases, the human body is amazingly capable of shifting gears from one energy source to another. That’s how we have survived as a species.</p>
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<p>I feel compelled to respond to this line of thought, although some of this is a rehash of what others have posted. Nutritionally unsound food is cheap and easy to find. Portion control takes a lot of thought and requires knowledge that many people don’t have. Plate sizes have gotten bigger, and what a “normal” portion of certain foods can surprising to people who have eaten large portions their whole lives. People who compulsively overeat don’t just magically start controlling themselves; they struggle with overcoming it, and often need professional help. Food is in abundance and is unavoidable, so temptation is everywhere.</p>
<p>Taubes poses the following hypothetical to illustrate the point:</p>
<p>A) A mother takes her 12 year old son to the doctor. He has just grown to 225 pounds and is 6 foot 6 inches tall. The doctor takes one look at him and says, “he’s got a pituitary gland problem and is producing too much growth hormone…”</p>
<p>B) A second mother takes her 12 year old son to the doctor. He has just grown to 225 pounds and is 5 foot 6 inches tall. The doctor takes one look at him and says, “he just eats too damn much and doesn’t exercise enough…”</p>
<p>On this calories in equals calories out thing, the real equation is:</p>
<p>CAL IN = CAL BURNED + CAL STORED</p>
<p>So if we eat less, one of two things has to happen. Either we store less CAL as fat or we burn less by being less active. If we do things to make our bodies store fat while eating less then we will automatically reduce our activity levels and find it difficult to los weight, while feeling constantly hungry.</p>
<p>But, CAL IN doesn’t have to be the driving factor. We can simply reaarrange the expression and get:</p>
<p>CAL STORED = CAL IN - CAL BURNED</p>
<p>So, if we can force the body to store less, then we must (and in fact will) eat less and/or burn more by exercising. We have no choice, we must do those things. Our bodies will automatically do it. We don’t even have to force ourselves to do it. Thus, it is really worthwhile to look at those things that regulate fat storage. Two that are known to regulate fat storage are insulin secretion and high intensity exercise. It’s much easier to stick to a diet when your body wants to eat less and move more. I strongly believe this is what I have experienced. Largely by blind luck, I put in place the steps specifically known to change metabolism from wanting to store fat to wanting to release fat from storage. As this got underway, I automatically became less hungry and wanted to exercise.</p>
<p>The issue is not whether I lost weight because I was eating fewer calories over a sustained period of time. Yes, of course, that was the case. The issue is why was it suddenly so easy to stick to an 1800 a day calorie intake? i mean, sure. Just tell a 250 pound man to stick to an 1800 calorie day diet for 16 months and he’ll lose weight. That’s obvious. But, it’s a heck of lot easier said than done. Willpower won’t do it. Not for that long.</p>
<p>very interesting discussions. The Gary Taubes book is excellent. To echo whats been said, I believe we have a perfect storm of reasons for obesity: sedentary lifestyles, cheap empty carbs and sugar, enormous portions, factory farmed animals that we consume that adds to our poor nutrition; mega corporations that push corn and corn syrup…unless someone is interested, it takes a great amount of effort and education, and money to eat differently.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting website: [The</a> Weston A. Price Foundation](<a href=“http://www.westonaprice.org%5DThe”>http://www.westonaprice.org). Weston Price was a dentist who travelled the world in the first part of the 20th century and studied the health of indigenous populations who ate traditional, unprocessed, omniviorous diets . They were incredibly healthy; that deteriorated when introduced to western white/flour/sugar diets.</p>
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<p>That’s probably true in some cases. And I’ve spoken to some very heavy people who got so discouraged with trying to be thin that they took the attitude above and added in “so I might as well eat what I want since I’m going to be fat anyway.” Overweight then leads to obesity which can progress to morbid obesity.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, this whole subject is fascinating, and as with most body systems, not simple.</p>
<p>As I understand what you’re saying, for some fat people, when they go on very calorie-restricted diet (or maybe, the wrong kind of calorie-restricted diet), for some reason, their body doesn’t release their body fat for energy. It’s surprising, because after all, their bodies stored the fat in the first place so that in times of reduced calories it could be turned into energy, but for some reason the system is going wrong.</p>
<p>If you think about it for a second, you can see the problem. Those people would literally be fat and starving at the same time. They’d be hungry, and they’d be weak. And, of course, they’d be subject to judgmental comments such as the ones here.</p>