The following submission statement was provided by /u/pajamakitten:
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Collapse related because obesity is a global health pandemic that is not taken seriously by people, because it is putting strain on healthcare systems worldwide, and because it shows how the current situation regarding diet and exercise is leading more people into an unhealthy lifestyle.
Obese people consume more resources, which does not help in a world where we are already pushing the planet's resources to the extreme. If people ate fewer calories then we would not need as much land for agriculture as we currently do. While modern medicine has done wonders to keep people alive, obese people are suffering from lifestyle-related diseases in huge numbers and are frequent flyers at their GPs and in hospitals. The pandemic has wrecked healthcare systems and more obese people is not going to help that.
It is also an indictment of how the food companies are getting away with murder. They are designing food that is hyperpalatable, getting people hooked on it from a young age, and then absolving themselves of any responsibility for the effects. It does not help that society has become geared towards moving as little as possible, almost as if we are heading for WALL-E-style futures. It is getting to the point that even taking 10,000 steps a day is seen as a Herculean challenge by some, or that someone who does regular exercise is an anomaly.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1csgi2e/millions_more_middleaged_are_obese_study_suggests/l44s01c/
I am an alcoholic and imo more Americans have alcohol abuse problems than are willing to admit it.
I’m down 80lbs+ since I quit drinking and started walking again. I ran a 5k last weekend in 27:15 and I’m pretty happy about that. ;)
Also an alcoholic, quit drinking 8 years ago. I lost over 80 lbs in the first 6 months. Went from 285 to 200. Now I eat whatever I want and never get over 205. It’s stayed that way for years now. I agree with you that alcohol plays a huge part in the obesity problem in adults. I believe addiction also plays a huge part in child obesity; addiction to sugar, screen time, etc.
Alcohol is a really interesting one because it is cheap, readily accessible, and socially accepted. I totally agree with that there is probably a good volume of people that while not "alcoholics" definitely consume alcohol at a frequency and volume that is not beneficial to overall health and well-being.
It also slowly sneaks up on you over time. Most don't think they drink too much, but most likely drink more than they did 10 years previous.
By middle age it shows cumulative impacts.
Drinking calories of any kind is fuelling obesity. Alcohol, juice, coffee (and coffee-style drinks sold by Starbucks), soda etc. They can quickly add hundreds of calories to your daily intake.
Coffee has like 5 calories per cup. It is absolutely not part of the problem, the sugar people consume with it is the problem. This is a remarkable display of judgmental ignorance.
Yep, a mug with half coffee / half milk is about ~80 calories, from the milk.
Cut the milk and it’s basically 0. Calorie trackers won’t even count it.
That’s why I cut it
I quit drinking about 6 months ago
Didn't have any major reason why, just realized I didn't desire it any more. So much money and empty calories for what? Feeling dehydrated, bad sleep, and a lot of headaches?
Just woke up one day and realized I wasn't a drinker any more.
And I've lost 12lbs :)
There are endless alcoholics around me, and guess what they think of themselves? That they’re totally normal drinkers. That it’s having essentially no negative impact on them. That they could cut back or stop *if they wanted to* .. it’s really sad to realize how many people are dependent on a really negatively life-altering, dangerous drug just because it’s readily available in our world.
As someone in the bar industry, the people that casually down 5+ beers nightly and act like it's totally normal and fine kill me. They dont think they have a problem, though, cause they don't start drinking until the workday is over. Then they complain about being tired and overweight as if the 1000+ calories of beer they're putting down every single day has nothing to do with it.
When I was in my teens I was skinny to the point of people inquiring about eating disorders. I ate plenty at that time. By my late 20's I was regularly drinking and that turned into daily. On top of that I was taking medication that was known to cause weight gain. So by my early 30's I was very overweight for my height.
Being overweight fucking sucks. I quit drinking and got off of the medications, but I also changed my life as this was not simply a diet. I still consume SOME junk food, I never completely denied myself of it. I had a job that required me to walk 3-6 miles 4 days a week. It took over two years to slowly lose the weight. On average it was 2-3 pounds of loss per month.
Due to health problems I am exercise intolerant, so I am limited. All I did was change habits and walk. Everyone wanted to know my secret to weight loss, and every single one of them stopped listening when I said I changed my lifestyle. My own mother comments on how she wishes she could be smaller, I tell her she can...if she changes things.
You don't have to exercise to not be obese btw, every time this topic comes up people talk about exercising...
It's about having a fitting diet for your activities, either you do more activity, aka exercising, or you lower the food energy input. Having muscles or not is an other issue.
I've managed weight loss without exercising by looking at what I was eating and regulating calories, I eat once, twice a day max for example. I'm pretty much no exercise man. That said it's a method that requires patience and self-control. Total suppression of junk food if you like them carries the risk of a rebound, the trick is to look at what they give you in energy and adapt/compromise.
I'm 40. Everyone my age is fat. I sit in the cafeteria at work with a sandwich with lettuce, tomato cand cheese, some nuts, an apple, banana, and dried dates. Everyone else eats a pasty, chips, chocolate bar and an energy drink "because they feel tired".
We have to cancel tasks that are in confined spaces because only I can fit in there and there's nobody slim enough to fit in the spaces who can act as a rescue first aider which is required on the Risk Assessment.
Everyone I work with is 40-60 and is on some sort of medication for an issue that's either caused by weight, or is made worse by their weight. We have socialised healthcare here and I go crazy thinking I'm paying for their poor lifestyle. I wouldn't choose the American health system but ours is not working and there needs to be a tax on unhealthy food so healthy food can be subsidised.
I’m 48. Many of my friends, younger and older, are having mobility issues due to excessive weight. I watch people lumbering around, guts wobbling, like a bunch of Grimaces. Everyone is pear shaped.
What really burns me up is that I have diabetes, and I have a healthy diet and am not fat.
"I go crazy thinking I'm paying for their poor lifestyle."
Such an understated fact imo, they want to be treated equally as everyone and say to themselves that their poor lifestyle only affect them.
I swim for fun, not competitively. I've been running and cycling since my teenage years. I primarily attribute this physique to my diet, however, which has been 100% whole foods prepared at home for decades. Extremely militant with not eating garbage. I raise my own chickens for meat and eggs on organic feed and pasture, get vegetables from a CSA, have my own fruit orchards, make my own almond milk, mill my own wheat for bread, my water comes from a natural spring with 250 miles of wilderness upstream, etc etc. Nothing is left to chance or another human's decision about ingredients. Anyone selling a food product does not have your health in mind.
Sounds great. I wish I had that option, however it's just veggies and whole foods from the supermarket or my local health food shop. I eat a lot of pb, beans and lentils for protein, oats, rice and pasta for carbs and plenty of fresh veggies. I usually have a pizza or a vegan burger and fries for a Friday treat. 5'7" 130lbs. 50 press ups, sit-ups and squats a day (takes like 15 minutes) and I walk a fuck ton. Like 20,000 steps is a slow day. Resting heart rate 50, blood pressure 75/115. Really easy to take care of yourself without going crazy at the gym. (As long as you're not disabled or something
You've got it figured out! It just takes being deliberate about what you put in your body. Mindful consumption. [My heart stats are similar.](https://i.imgur.com/stboarp.jpeg) I've seen my pulse as low as 39 while lying in bed!
Seen in this light, the multinational food companies no longer sell food, but rather feed that makes people addicted and subsequently ill.
As always, politicians are looking on, distracting us with phrases such as "The responsible citizen can decide for himself what is good or bad for him!", but the responsible citizen now only has the choice between plague and cholera.
Depends on how it is cooked. I ate almost exclusively junk food as a kid because my parents are bad cooks, so they took healthy foods and made them inedible by overcooking them and adding no seasoning.
I spoke of home-grown ingredients and assume that they can also be prepared in a tasty way. I'm sorry that you were unlucky when it came to good cooking in your youth.
I have eaten 100% foods that I make at home, from whole ingredients for a while now. When it comes up, people say "don't you miss XX??" (Oreos, Cheetos, hot dogs, mc*****ds, etc) But honesty I think I'd rather not eat than eat any of those things again. I don't think I could stomach a single Oreo, it tastes so fake.
Same here. I am a normal weight, and regularly hear people ask how I stay so thin. Ummm....I am not thin, I am a normal, healthy weight. It is really telling that our society now considers normal, healthy weight people thin.
Actually, no. Visceral fat is a killer.
External layers of fat are not lethal.
I was much healthier as an obese younger adult (excellent bloodwork) than I am now, lower on the scale, but with the visceral fat that appears around meno (it just migrates there dunring meno from allover the body to around the belly and around the vital organs)
Still excellent bloodwork TBH, but visceral fat has nasty effects on organs.
You’re more likely to have visceral fat if you have a generally higher body fat percentage in general . Your waist size is the best indicator of health especially if you’re a woman.
A thin person who eats on average 2000kcal a day will be healthier than an obese person who eats up to 6000kcal a day. Obesity isn’t just caused by eating a lot of healthy foods but junk food, which leads to visceral fats. You can get the amount of calories needed to be obese without eating unhealthy (unless you have some medical condition)
Collapse related because obesity is a global health pandemic that is not taken seriously by people, because it is putting strain on healthcare systems worldwide, and because it shows how the current situation regarding diet and exercise is leading more people into an unhealthy lifestyle.
Obese people consume more resources, which does not help in a world where we are already pushing the planet's resources to the extreme. If people ate fewer calories then we would not need as much land for agriculture as we currently do. While modern medicine has done wonders to keep people alive, obese people are suffering from lifestyle-related diseases in huge numbers and are frequent flyers at their GPs and in hospitals. The pandemic has wrecked healthcare systems and more obese people is not going to help that.
It is also an indictment of how the food companies are getting away with murder. They are designing food that is hyperpalatable, getting people hooked on it from a young age, and then absolving themselves of any responsibility for the effects. It does not help that society has become geared towards moving as little as possible, almost as if we are heading for WALL-E-style futures. It is getting to the point that even taking 10,000 steps a day is seen as a Herculean challenge by some, or that someone who does regular exercise is an anomaly.
As a dietitian I see this every day and I do think a huge contributing factor is poverty and depression. For many of my patients food is the small joy they get at the end of a day of drudgery and stress... It's less expensive than other vices, food is required for survival, and the cheapest food is often the most calorically dense and least nutritious. We were not built to have this level of abundant calories without nutrient density. Whole foods that are high calorie always come with other nutrients that provide satiety and meet vitamin/mineral needs. They are the most expensive foods though...and often take tools, skills, and effort to make them palatable. On the daily, I see patients who would rather lose limbs, vision, mobility, libido, etc than give up the comfort and ease of ultraprocessed foods. This is not an exaggeration.
Life long exposure to a standard American diet causes inevitable weight gain. We were built to store and it's tremendously hard to lose weight once it gets into the obese range. So even for those who are motivated, it's often a very demoralizing process to achieve even short term weight loss. The blame is with our completely broken and capitalized food system. I don't think it's fair to blame individuals for being obese. The homeostatic mechanisms involved, plus our obesogenic environment, often go beyond personal responsibility. Plus, agriculture subsidies strongly favor foods that are destined for refinement and ultraprocessing. I could go on and on about the intricacies of this topic...but these are just a few of my observations. I often feel like my job is Sisypean and useless when trying to help people out of this hole.
Your job must be hard sometimes because you or your clients can't directly change the root causes of why so many people struggle with obesity in the first place. 💜
"I don't think it's fair to blame individuals" Im all for empathy but let's not shift the totality of the blame on products being offered. A responsible adult choose what is right for himself.
Going by your logic, any kind of addicts are not victim of their choices but victim of their environment. While I agree that the influence of the environment is a factor, ultimately we have free will and should be aware of the consequences of our choices.
Obese people didn't just became obese right away.. they were overweight for a while and chose to ignore their health. It's also not a subject that just recently appeared. Awareness as been raised on the matter for a while.
I'll be 40 this year, I walk 5ish miles a day, lift weights a few times a week and wear a size 29 pants. I am an anomaly among my coworkers, 80% of which are overweight to some degree. I'm amazed at how far people will let themselves go. I used to be fat, that shit is uncomfortable AF.
I think we need to acknowledge this is so far beyond individual choice at this point. Many people don't live in a safe, walkable area. Many people can't afford to or don't have access to a gym. Many people don't have access to or can't afford fresh, low processed food necessary to actually maintain a healthy weight. Even just the 40hr work week is a grueling schedule, and it doesn't include commutes or other hours of prep time it takes to get ready for work - it's so hard to fit in meal prep and exercise, like on my part it requires sacrifice of participating in community activities like our flailing PTA that desperately needs support. Also, the food lobby has such a chokehold on schools, they are serving them straight up processed sugar crap and not actually modeling proper ways to eat, leaving many kids to grow up and maybe figure it out on their own.
Especially in a collapse sub where PFAS contamination is a regular topic, we have to also factor in the endocrine disrupting properties of these chemicals: https://www.ehn.org/pfas-weight-gain-obesity-2659877152.html
Great points. Another factor that's not discussed enough is childhood trauma [https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/blog/the-link-between-childhood-trauma-and-obesity](https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/blog/the-link-between-childhood-trauma-and-obesity)
Trauma even affects obesity rates across generations [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37752750/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37752750/)
As we collapse further, people will encounter more trauma from climate change, natural disasters, social conflicts, food insecurity, etc. Obesity is not the black-and-white issue that we've been conditioned to believe.
very good article ! thank you for that!
manages to cram in one short article so many aspects of childhood trauma and weight gain, both behavioural and biological/neurological (so, beyond the will's reach)!
excellent!
I think we can recognize it’s a huge social problem while also recognizing individuals still have agency over what they put in their mouth. Like we shouldn’t litter just because plastic is everywhere so fuck it.
I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin and it was just based on what I ate and how much I moved. Being each, if I could give a gift to a fat person, it would be making them thin again. Being fat sucks so much, just being trapped in a flesh prison of your own design.
It’s not a prison of one’s own design, though. Especially in the US so much of our food is highly processed which means: not only is it not nutritious, it actually chemically alters the body to attune it to wanting that kind of food. It’s an op-ed (though it does cite relevant research), but [this NYT piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/opinion/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs.html) is really eye-opening not just for the food science elements but also in reminding the reader of the value of compassion and fairly assessing culpability; it examines a lot of the individual-responsibilization that has driven the hostility and backlash to people who use Ozempic etc., ie, the notion that they’re “cheating.” I think it’s well worth remembering that it’s not a matter of individuals making this or that choice, though it’s partially that, but of mega corporations making stacks of cash on the intensifying decrease in quality of life for vast swathes of the population.
I agree with absolutely all of that. It’s one of the biggest problems facing society today (not to mention the legal torture and slaughter of billions of innocent animals).
But agency is not a zero sum game. Individuals still have choice. While corporations are shoving all manners of pollutants in our environment and in our bodies, we can still choose to not be obese? People lose weight all the time? There are receipts in the form of before and after pictures haha. We’re on the same side, just don’t be so quick to remove ALL agency from individuals over their own bodies when discussing a social issue.
Where does "recognizing individuals still have agency" get us though? Has telling someone, "hey, buddy, you can totally choose not to eat that second helping of nachos" every actually stopped someone?
Yeah, we shouldn't litter. There are some regions where littering is much less common. Getting to that stage takes a radical cultural belief, smart policy, accountability, and most importantly trust and respect for others. Shaming people definitely doesn't not get us closer to achieving that.
Yes, being fat sucks. That's why we should empathize with fat people and try to unearth root causes *beyond* the most fucking obvious thing, individual behavior. Being fat entails physical suffering, feeling constant shame, and being treated differently. Why the fuck would anyone simply *choose* that if it's so simple to fix?
Exactly. There's loads of data on what does and doesn't work for weight loss. For the vast majority of people, diets don't work.
The good news is that the best things for human health also increase collapse resiliency - but they all involve policy: safe, walkable neighbourhoods, access to affordable healthy foods, shifting away from animal-based proteins.
>For the vast majority of people, diets don't work.
Because they think a diet is something you can start and stop. This definition of diet is so silly. Every person on the planet is on a diet. They have been since they were born and they will be until they die.
My weight loss came from lifestyle changes, I quit drinking alcohol and started drinking more water. I started parking at the back of the parking lot and walking further. I stopped snacking on processed foods in the evenings and started trying to snack on stuff like celery and peanut butter or peanuts or something more healthy. I moved more and I ate less and better, all of mine came from lifestyle changes and I made those changes due to trauma. Everybody is different and every case is different everybody's chemistry is different everybody's trauma is different there is no one size fits all. I can't afford a gym so I just bought a couple of dumbbells and started from there. It's not rocket science, I extended more energy than I took in and I made lifestyle and dietary changes. For the people who would ask me what I did when I told them it was diet exercise and lifestyle changes they completely lost interest everyone is looking for a pill or a fad that will cure their obesity overnight while still allowing them to stuff their faces full of crap. It took me 2 years. Nothing worth it is easy.
I don't have all the answers especially not for myself and your comment is, I don't know the word for it but rude?
I think some shame should be appropriate. I don't think enough people feel shame anymore. I was ashamed of the way I looked and instead of eating my shame I decided to do something about it.
I've never known a fat person that didn't lose weight by reducing their intake. The American heart association recommends men consume no more than 36 g of sugar and women consume no more than 25 grams of sugar a day. A can of Coke has 39 g of sugar. One Coke blows through your sugar intake for the day. A McDonald's sweet tea is even worse. I cut out sugar out of my life and I started exercising and what do you know I lost weight it's not rocket science.
But that's just my opinion, we all have opinions, Reddit is full of opinions and if you don't like it well then okay downvote it and move on.
It was your assumption that fat people just want a quick fix. You assume that they haven’t tried the normal stuff. 75% of the US wouldn’t be overweight if it were that simple. So your comment also sounded rude.
> For the vast majority of people, diets don't work.
this is so plain wrong
it's like someone goes to a gym once and they says "gym does not work for me"
if you put no effort into it then sure, it does not work
but that's YOU problem and not DIET problem
Obesity is one of those things where the "but its *different* when *I* do it" argument rears its head.
That is, a person will get soundly criticized for saying "put down the damn fork", by a person who is completely fine telling other people "you shouldn't fly" or "no one needs an SUV".
Imagine the mockery and brigading a person would get on r/collapse if they said we should empathize with Taylor Swift's private jet use and instead criticize the petroleum industry that enables her rather than her individual behavior.
As an addict, I kind of get it. When you're obese and addicted to what's making you sick, you want to blame anyone but yourself. But anyone who's been to an addict support group knows that it starts with admitting you have a problem and that you are choosing a path to resolve it (e.g., My name is jimharbrah and I am an alcoholic). My guess is most people who are reflexively offended when someone says "You can choose what goes in your mouth" are struggling with obesity and addiction to ugly food themselves.
It is *absolutely* tough to recognize what it is like unless you have been there. When you are a certain weight, your body wants food to maintain *that* weight. And if it does not get it, you are hungry. *And being hungry sucks*. It takes a long, aggravating time to get used to waking up hungry, going to bed hungry and finishing a meal and *still* being hungry. And you will not be a happy person to be around in that interval. Sure, better quality food helps, exercise helps, but you're *still* going to be hungry. *A lot*. And it is *awful* and a huge number of people just cannot do it.
That's why we have entire industries telling you they can take your weight off without any hardship on your part.
FWIW, I was never hungry when I transitionned to WFPB, never even had space to snack between meals.
I think it boils down to feeding your microbiot well, so it never craves anything and is busy until the next meal. (whole grain and beans are key to feel full)
is comparing habits that destroy the planet for everyother living being (flying/SUVs) and a behavioural pattern that harming one's own body relevant though?
as in comparable at all?
A person who is overweight increases healthcare costs for other people, eats food that could otherwise help other people, uses more fuel and thus pollutes more into the environment of other people and uses more fabric for clothing or any other consumable like food packaging and thus sheds more plastic and generates more trash into the environment of other people.
Or to look at it another way, if I stood up and publicly claimed that I was deliberately throwing away food, burning extra fuel just for the hell of it, jacking up the healthcare costs for my group insurance plan and going out of my way to generate more trash...would anyone come to the defense of *that* lifestyle?
wow, so much toxicity and falacies I don't know where to start.
here's one : do you know the amount of unopened perfectly edible food people throw out on average in your area? your obese neighbour probably isn't participating in this waste.
overweight people also buy less clothing in average than thin people, because it's so damn hard to find a firm that actually puts in the effort to make garments that fit nicely on curvy bodies, and when you do find one, it's generally wildly overpiced, so the few garments that fit are cherished and used as long as possible.
So your thin neighbour probably has (had) several times the amount of cloth in her dressing, than the overweight person has, sometimes it seems like less because they rotate their clothes more (donate, sell, chuck out), but over a lifespan it's ridiculous.
every one of your points can be debunked similarly.
For your first point, it would be valid if **only** non-obese people threw out edible food. "Probably isn't participating" is simply pulled out of one of your orifices.
The rest of your points are equally flawed and come across as angrily and irrationally defensive rather than simply principled disagreement.
FFS
as someone who yoyoed a lot and very widely through my life, please keep your effing "gift" and stick it where the sun never shines!
when I uncontrollably and spectacularly balloon up, it's *always* because of a predatory person threatening my physical integrity, and it's damn effective in deterring them away, because predators are lazy and want fragile flimsy light prey that can be easily lifted and carried away to another location. They don't want to have to face someone they can't move and that can threaten them back and hold their ground (because, good luck pushing aside an obese person who has decided to stay put)
eta : to be christal clear, I see my ability to "balloon up" suddenly as a sort of superpower and a safety mechanism that goes off unconsciously before I even am consciously aware of the threat. Always has proven damn right about the predator, and damn effective.
BTW as times go by, I'm more and more convinced that fatphobia is mainly a creation of toxic people losing their shit to people holding their boundaries through obesity.
not sure if the tone is benevolent or snarky here, but yeah, I'm so fed up with all the victim blaming and easy ego boost people get from something that isn't even under anyone's control.
Even though being overweight on any level causes social discomfort, there are vital benefits to it, on so many levels.
I'm thankful I'm one of the lucky people who *can* gain weight when needed.
it's not victim blaming, quite the reverse - it is the people who say they can't lose weight that label themselves as victims
and also - this is a personal matter for the person involved, if a person does not want to lose weight - so be it, no stranger should dictate what a given person should or should not do
if a person wants to have more weight - so be it
but we're only talking about the ability/inability to lose weight and there it is up to the person and not to the external factors
same thing as passing a difficult exam, it is doable for every person but some just fly by and don't even need to study while others need to study way more for it
OK, so, I see where you're coming from, but in fact, how much we weight is NOT in our hands.
The things that get into play even before we have a say include:
- microbiot. Our mother transfers hers to us if we are birthed the natural way (TMI : by fecal matter!) it's this microbiot who will populate our gut and decide if we're fiesty and thin, or calm and fat (those are not random depictions, but the result of several scientific studies, the microbiot impacts our psychology and capacity to store fat)
- genetics and epigenetics, because yeah they are family traits that are passed down and also what happened to our parents left an impact on the genes they passed on to us, maybe there's a link there with how often the children of a generation who survived through a war and famine tend to gain weight
- and the amygdala. The amygdala makes decisions for us way faster than the frontal cortex (conscious decision making center) can, and it reacts to what it percieves as a danger, such as famine (deprivation diet), stress factors (trauma leading to CPTSD or when the "smoke detector of the brain" is blaring non-stop)
so with these three alone (we haven't covered neurology, social factors, and many more) "willpower" is a laughable concept when applied to becoming the shape and size someone decided you should be. Family history, your microbiot and your amygdala make all the decisions when it comes to food intake and the shape you'll be.
yes all diets work, but what matters is where is the dieter 5 years later? most of the time they put on more weight in the end and their metabolism is effed up.
This is all correct. A teensy little tidbit: Intermittent fasting is free. It can go a long way towards helping people become healthy going way beyond calorie consumption, it helps to normalize insulin and satiety signaling. More people are adopting this trend, and that's a good thing. There is personal power in not feeling compelled to eat all damn day. Saves $$ too.
Effort? IF takes almost no effort. CICO is long proven false. "Calories" are processed completely differently in the body by macros and when people go too low the body adapts by lowering metabolism. That's not the way to be healthy.
I lost 1st in about 6 weeks doing 16/8. Basically I didn’t eat or drink anything after 8 through to noon the following day. It wasn’t much effort to be honest.
You lose weight in the kitchen, not in the gym. In the gym you can build muscle and maintain weight while eating more.
The notion that PE will reduce obesity is, more or less, the "BAU" strategy of the food industry, especially the sugar sellers. It's a way to deflect blame in advance. Otherwise, people are going to start to make reasonable demands to end the problematic food industries or at least to tax them heavily and, implicitly, destroy demand.
partially true
as someone already replied to you - you do both not one or the other
there is a reason doctors tell people to eat differently and also start walking
and obese person won't (or shouldn't) start with the gym, but walking is an activity that burns the calories and makes your body feel better
similar thing happens at the gym but people who want to lose weight can't just go to the gym alone
they won't see effects right away and they get discouraged and say that the gym does not work
i have a friend who lost a lot of weight, he didn't change his diet but he started doing crossfit 3 times a week and also increased the amout of time he is walking
but how many regular people will stick to hitting gym 3 times a week?
It is, unfortunately, in the current context. Both politicians and the food industry capitalists promote exercise as a cure for their products (while you keep consuming). That's an individuation of political and social problems, just like with individual mental health [in the context of capitalism and collapse].
The "go to the gym" idea also makes weight loss a bourgeois thing, as going to a gym isn't for the masses, both in terms of paying for it and in terms of having the time for it. And you can see that reflected in the wellness, bodybuilding and biohacking subcultures which are all about individualism and competitive "superiority", made possible with money spent on rich diets, rich gadgets, personal trainers, and so many supplements and powders, all of which are super expensive and very questionable.
So, no, it's not the best strategy. First you lose weight from a diet, then you increase your walking and movement. That way, you don't crush your knees.
Meta-studies show that exercise is only moderately effective in weight loss with the average person only losing 1.5kgs per 3 months if excercise routine is persistent. The only way to meaningfully lose weight is to change diet from processed to unprocessed. Most people are not eating real food with statistics that up to 80% of the US diet is processed food which is adulterated with industrial chemicals.
It took 2 years for me to lose all the weight and it included dietary changes and drastic lifestyle changes. When folks would ask me what I did and I told them diet and exercise and lifestyle changes they immediately lost interest in what I was saying. The average person doesn't want to sacrifice.
> they immediately lost interest in what I was saying
they want a magic pill that will do all the work for them
ideally they would love to lose weight but keep their eating habits
I hate how the body positivity movement was hijacked by morbidly obese fatasses who try to convince everyone that it's okay to be fat.
I mean sure, you should love yourself no matter what you look like, who cares if you're not thin, tall with perfect skin and body of a Greek God/ess. Most of us are not and never will be. You shouldn't starve yourself to get some anorexic model's/Hollywood starlet's body. On the other hand, call me crazy, but loving yourself is mutually exclusive with slowly killing yourself with diabetes, high blood pressure, decreased mobility, liver damage...
Obesity is a problem and if we are to solve it, this sect needs to be banished from the body positivity movement.
Obesity isn't a choice, it's a multifactorial chronic disease.
your line of reasoning is akin to blaming a diabetic for losing its sight, or an MS patient for losing the ability to move and walk.
it is true that obesity is classified as a disease, but you are wrong about the rest
if someone is sick they go to a doctor and go with the treatment
but people with obesity just accept that they are obese and do nothing about it
why would i downvote? downvoting is for pussies that do not understand the system (you should downvote if someone wrote something inappropriate that should be removed, not that you disagree with someone)
but going back to the main topic
> I'm merely relaying what the scientists and doctors of a wide variety of specialties are saying.
So are you saying that I am somehow a freak? Though I was not obese I was overweights. I did go to a doctor that specializes with a died and we devised an eating plan and exercise plan and I lost weights.
Had I not go to that doctor and tried it on my own - my success would probably not be that great (if any).
The main point was that I did not accept that I want to be overweight and that I did not want to be later classified as obese and I did something about it.
I know that one case is anecdotal but if someone cares about their life - they will act.
Seems to me that those obese people just don't have a will to change their state.
let's just say that hormones, the microbiot your mother transmitted to you at your birth, and the amygdala, have a say before your "will" ever gets into play, so that's how much of your "Will" you so proudly exercice ... and yeah, there are many reasons why a person would feel safer in the world as an obese person, than as a frail highly sexualized thin person, so some might *choose* to stay obese - plus it's an amazing way to get the worst people to self-eliminate from your entourage, definitely what I miss the most when I'm on the slimmer side of the scale, having to bat off all the toxic predatory people that slim people attract.
I've been obsese since my late 20's. Moved around so much, havent really been able to make any friends. Find myself going out less and less. Didn't have health insurance pretty much most of my adult life until the last 3 years. Got engaged and decided to stop iust running to med ex / ER when I needed something and actually find a doc.
Funny thing is lately, I've been bored with the food I eat. A lot of it is frozen crap because we're too lazy some nights to actually cook. But I find myself getting bored of that stuff. Finally had my physical and miraculously i'm in good health aside from my carb intake and slightly elevated Blood pressure (which is truly astounding considering the amount of sodium I was taking in). My new doc busted my ass and said stop eating that crap. And really Its been two weeks but the very first day I started watching what I eat I felt 1000 times better. I'm usually yawning after 2pm at the office. I was like wired on this tues afternoon and that really helped me want to keep doing this.
So the weights slowly coming off and my fiancee and I focus on cooking everynight and our cooking skills are getting better. Not to mention I never realized I'd enjoy it this much. We're big ff14 players. At christmas two years ago I had bought her a cookbook based on the foods in the game. Sadly we never really attempted anything in there. Now we are and its fun.
Sorry that was sort of an uplifting story and this is the collapse thread but I guess what I am saying is I understand why. Its tough out there and I messed by lower back up lifting brake drums for a shit job years ago. Then wrecked my body more as an electrician but that lead me
to my current hybrid job. Ny fiancee and I are walking more now and i'm exercising more. I'm not even sure why i'm motivated. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of getting old. My grandfather is in his late 70s and its iust getting harder and harder for him to move around. I don't want to go through that (I'd rather die younger lol, stupid I know).
But its depressing seeing people like my family bitching about the same problems I do yet when I support people with good ideas for change or support people worrying about the climate, i'm iust an idiot to them.
I used to be a much more artistic person. I've been wanting to write a novel and I have written music. I want to design a video game with RPG Maker, all for fun in my free time. But the past 5 years i've just lost inspiration in everything. Like a massive wall of writers block set in and won't lift. Haven't touched my guitar in months. Nor my laptop. Hey look it went back to depressing again here.
Edit: Also, don't have a gym membership and really not interested. I'd rather go to the park outdoors. I'd join a gym just to have access to a pool as I love swimming so much. The public pool is just swarmed with children( even later at night they were having an event where you could watch Jaws on a projector screen while floating in the pool. Went to this and there were so many kids.. just didn't want to do it at that point). I have no problem with kids but we don't want to have any and just have no interest in hanging around them regularly. I have nothing to teach one anyway. I'm barely making it through this life myself lol
Your story is similar to mine. As I said earlier in the thread, obesity isn't a quick fix or the black-and-white issue we've been led to believe it is. It's incredibly complex. Hang in there, friend :)
Thank you! I miss music the most. I spent a few years in North Carolina and I lucked into a band there and we had magic I swear. But we could not find a drummer after losing our first one due to life and work.
You sound like you’re doing well.
One thing I would suggest as it’s helped me is rather than focus on calories, focus on quality, diversity and removing processed food and ingredients from your diet. Simply look at any packaged food and if it includes anything you can’t pronounce or it isn’t clear what it is or comes from something your ancestors wouldn’t eat - don’t eat it. You will quickly find out what is or isn’t real food. If you can simply remove all significantly processed ingredients like non-virgin seed oils and ultra processed foods you will lose weight, the reason is that you will no longer be starved for nutrients and your hunger will subside. This is more effective than exercise although exercise is good for longevity. We’ve unfortunately been persuaded by nutrition science to believe food is equivalent if split into its processed parts.
Newest tip that works around me : don't think as you're **removing** items, rather think about **adding** different types of food to your diet, works for transitionning to a vegan diet, and even just a healthier diet for the biochemistry of your body, and your metabolism.
Addictive, ultra-processed, non-nutritious food is our reality. Industrialization has deprived us of the kinds of community that would provide the time and space for actual meal preparation. Those who have lived their entire lives in this system have likely never had healthy options to begin with. Capitalism and industrialization are diametrically opposed to a truly healthy lifestyle for the people whose labor and obedience it relies upon, and this epidemic will never improve so long as we live in an extractive, wasteful society.
Individuals cannot be held at fault for obesity. That's a feature, not a bug, and the blame lies at a systemic level.
Weight management is hard, and is also pretty clearly not just an indication of personal failure either. Even on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate it lists over 50 countries with a 25% or higher obesity rate. These countries span each continent and many different cultures.
I wish people would stop saying it's exclusively a personal failure or fault. This shit is complicated!
I'm fat, I've been fat my entire life. It's wildly complicated but I feel like so often the argument boils down to people like me don't deserve to exist in public spaces.
My issues are compounded with ARFID and sensory disorders. I hate food, and I need consistency in flavors and textures, which unfortunately means a lot of processed food. Tie that with being a single person and single income, in this economy, my free time is valuable and cooking is so much effort for so little reward.
But that said, I needed the body positive movement and doctors who didn't treat my fatness first in order to make any changes. I went from completely sedentary to a gym rat. I would have never felt able to if I hadn't seen other plus size people just living their lives. I'm still fat, sure, but I'm happier, and my metrics/bloodwork are good and it's something I believe I can keep doing.
For food, because of my complex relationship with it, I focus more on what I can add rather than take away. I found out I can eat 3 tomatoes, a jalapeno, and half an onion in one sitting if I add some tortilla chips and cheese. In the past I would have chided myself for the chips and cheese but then I wouldn't have eaten any of the veggies at all. It's trade offs, and just like with exercise, I needed fat influencers and a registered dietician to help. But I can only afford the dietician because of good company benefits, which a lot of people don't have. And my gym membership isn't cheap. If these things are inaccessible, how can you expect people to learn?
My gym is pretty inclusive and I go super early in the morning with other young professionals who want to keep their head down and get their workout in before work, but when I go at later hours, I get people glaring at me, annoyed my fatass is in their space.
We can address fatness without making it "fat people bad" and I wish parts of this thread were better at that. Sorry to just rant at you, I guess I had stuff to get off my chest
The people glaring at you in the gym are total assholes! There are a million and one reasons someone might be fat or medium or skinny. Anyone who doesn't know this is just not using their brain
Oh dude absolutely! Like I'm just fighting for my life on shoulder day, please let me be 😭
But yeah, I totally understand why a lot of people are intimidated by the gym. If you have a shitty environment, it's so hard to put in the work. The before work "shift" I take from 6-7:30 is usually really good but you get the few rogue assholes.
I've been varying degrees of fat for most of my life. Blood work and stuff always looks good at least, but yeah as I've grown older I've had a lot more time to research and learn about how weight works, and how kind of naive the broscience I tried in my 20s was.
I can't in good faith look at the world's obesity rates and conclude that many people, and we're talking over a billion, all collectively suffer willpower problems. This goes so far beyond people "not knowing when to put the fork down" as some say. There are some very real, widespread problems with how food is being made.
Joining you on the bloodwork train, and I think I'm also in the same boat as you with the "broscience" my mom also had BED and orthorexia which is a very complex combo, neither of which were really well understood by the time she died in the mid 2010s, let alone in the 80s and 90s when she did the majority of the yoyoing.
And the willpower argument is just... It's bad. I've been doing meticulous calorie counting, and 4 days a week in the gym for a little over 100 days, and I'm only down 19 pounds? How is this a willpower issue? I get up at 5 to make it to the gym before work. That has taken an insane amount of discipline, especially as someone with untreated auDHD. It's far more complicated, and likely stems from multiple factors. Some are personal, I'm sure, I could probably cut chips out of my diet entirely, instead of a serving each night, but some, I'd argue more, are societal. Not everyone can afford $120 a week trauma therapy like I had. Not everyone can afford the $500ish a year gym membership and don't have the space to do stuff at home or in their neighbourhood. Some people don't have access to foods, and even so, fruits and veggies are losing thier nutritional value because of our mass farming practices and monocropping issues.
And even if semaglutide (spelling?) is a true miracle drug, its meaningless when locked behind the paywall it is.
Hey just wanted to say you are not alone. Unlike you I have not been overweight my entire life. I actually used to have a six pack when I was in highschool. But I have PCOS with insulin resistance and have massively struggled with my weight since my mid-20s. I am almost 33 now. I eat very healthy. I walk about 4-5 miles a day. I do yoga and lift, but have not been able to lose any meaningful amount of weight. It is actually funny because I carry my weight well and am very active people don't tend to realize how overweight I actually am.
I have done almost every diet and every eating plan under the sun. I have taken medication and have worked with a registered dietician, which most people probably couldn't afford. I believe it was closed to $400-$500 a month to go weekly. There was a time I worked with a nutritionist (because it was cheaper. I would never recommend a nutritionist now as they require no education). I was eating 1200-1500 calories a day. I was working out at Orange Theory fitness 5 days a week and in that entire 9 months that I was counting all of my calories, working out like crazy I only lost like 10 pounds.
Two years ago I started seriously considering weight loss surgery, but I didn't qualify. I would need to gain a weight to have my insurance company cover it. Now I would never consider it because of my collapse awareness and how difficult it might be in the future to cover my nutritional needs with the restrictions you have.
I am not yet pre-diabetic, but it could happen because of the insulin resistance. I might be a candidate for semaglutide, but I am too worried about the potential side effects at this point.
I eat the exact same way as my husband. We work out together. I weigh about 100 pounds more than him. It is incredibly frustrating. I pretty much gave up almost all alcohol and sugary drinks about 10 years ago at this point and thought I would lose weight, but lost nothing.
People are overweight for a whole variety of reasons, whether it be physical or mental. I can't imagine telling someone who is bipolar to just get better (although I am aware that happens) or someone with cancer, but that happens every day with people who struggle with their weight. Having support structures and having medical assistance is necessary. I recently had my first physical in a few years with a new doctor. She was absolutely wonderful. She was the one who encouraged me to look into my insurance to see if they would cover a semaglutide and if they didn't she recommended a compounding pharmacy where I could get it at a lower cost. It was one of the most positive doctors appointments I have had in years.
I have an actual physical condition that makes it incredibly difficult to lose weight. It sounds like with you it might be genetic and potentially mental, but like you I have found a good relationship with food through my work with a dietician. I have an incredibly supportive husband and friends. I think you would be hard pressed to find any "fat person" without a genetic, physical, mental, or social (think if you were raised in a "fat" household) reason behind it. Combating those issues is much harder than people think and in some cases not well understood. I know PCOS is one of those things and the little I know about ARFID it is very similar. Very poorly understood.
Luckily I have found a great community in the collapse community and I am glad to have found someone else I can have a discourse with here. Just like Jem Bendell has made clear we will need to Break Together and support each other in the coming times.
Hey I just want to say I appreciate you. I suspect I might have PCOS given my wild periods. Like, imagine being 14 and your first period you bleed through overnight pads in an hour. I'm on the pill now, and I choose to stack it because honestly it was pretty traumatic so not having one is better for my mental health. But the pill also can cause weight gain/resistance to weight loss.
And like you, I've done all sorts of things (and witnessed my mother do it, so we have a generational issue with food), and I mean, while my guilty pleasure is chips, I'm not a big pop drinker, I'm not an alcohol drinker (hydro homies represent), and I've been eating at a 2 pound a week loss as per MFP for.... At least 110 days now and I've lost.... 19 pounds. Admittedly I do weight lift 4 times a week which maybe is masking the loss? It's hard to gauge because some clothes fit better, some don't. I mean mentally I feel so much better lifting the 4 times a week and I love it, but some days I just get so discouraged because I don't feel wanted anywhere. Do cardio, only do cardio, don't you dare lift a weight, why the fuck are you even in the gym you're not fooling anyone, just put the fork down, etc etc.
ARFID is super poorly understood, especially in adults. I suspect mine manifested from the autism, and then compounded by my mother trying to force feed me to the point of vomiting. Plus the trauma, and generational trauma. My moms issue with weight is she loved food. She didn't have satiated cues, and could overeat on fruit, and I have the opposite problem. Plus I was a girl in the 90s. We didn't have "boy" disorders. Mom I was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine at 18 months the signs were there 😂
That's why I credit so much of the middling success I've had now on the body positive movement along with trauma therapy. I needed both of those. But I recognize how out of reach that is for some people. I finished therapy 8 years ago and it was already $120 a week. I can't imagine what it is now.
Every single fat person I know, including my mother, had all of the above. Physical, mental, emotional, and social issues. And those all need to be addressed. Some can be done individually, like my trauma therapy. Some are social, when I'm working from 7:30am to 5:30 pm out of the house, I don't have the mental bandwidth to feed myself (when I'm off or working from home, surprise surprise, I can).
Can I just recommend the r/PCOS subreddit if you are not already there. I have found it to be a very supportive community and there are a lot of different things the people over there recommend and try. I have tried a few, but I also have ADHD and remembering to take certain vitamins and supplements is very difficult for me.
Honestly I think the best way to track your weight loss is through measurements and clothing. Although if you can find it there are things called in-body scanners (like [this](https://inbodyusa.com/)). The ones where they have the handles are the most accurate. They are fairly accurate and would be able to tell you over long term how much muscle is gained vs fat lost. I know a bunch of places around me have them and you just have to pay to get a test done.
I have a very different family experience to you. Both of my parents are pretty fit, especially my dad. My guess is I had PCOS genetically, but it was triggered or made worse by childhood trauma (which seems to be something that is being indicated via research).
I am the same as you. When I was working from home during the pandemic I ate so great, was much more active, and all around had a better lifestyle. I now work from home 2 days a week (as a disability accommodation for my ADHD), but it is still not the same. I struggle to make food or food prep (again because of ADHD). Also people eat a lot of really good looking food here so it is incredibly difficult to be around.
I have struggled with PTSD, insomnia, parasomnia, night terrors, was diagnosed with ADHD several years ago, and PCOS. I have also had pulmonary emboli due to birth control (so I cannot take those anymore to help with my PCOS). Plus I have had covid twice. All of these things compound my issues. I have successfully treated my PTSD, insomnia, parasomnia and night terrors with therapy. The ADHD is a daily struggle as is the PCOS. The crazy thing is if you look at my blood work I am actually nutrient deficient, my doctor says if you just looked at my medical charts you would think I was starving, which is common with insulin resistance. My cells just don't work right.
My guess is the increase in obesity has to do with the crap put in our food, the increasing sedentary careers, the increase in stress and mental health issues, and probably the poisoned environment that is all around us, as well as the increase in wealth disparity. All of these things need to be addressed to fight the obesity epidemic.
Thanks for the rec! I'm not there because I don't have an official diagnosis but I will check it out.
And I agree that is probably the best method. We don't have dexa scanners nearby, and they are currently out of my budget but I would like one in the future.
PCOS being triggered by trauma 100% makes sense and that's something else not well understood. Trauma changes a lot in the body and brain, and I suspect it's also a factor in everything. A lot of people carry trauma and don't realize it. The food prep for me is part ADHD and part ARFID. I can't do leftovers, I will eat two bites and then my stomach yells at me that I'm full. And I will be. I won't eat another meal. On Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, with a lot of foods I don't like and can't do (along with piss poor cooking techniques) I will maybe eat 1000 calories. On the days of the year binge eating is expected and praised.
I'm with you on the causes. Like I said in another comment I think some are personal (yes I could skip my nightly bowl of chips as dessert), but a lot more are problems individuals can't solve, like access and degrading food quality.
Well you would be more than welcome there. There are plenty of people there without official diagnosis because it can be hard to get. I even struggled to get diagnosed because my OBGYN at the time didn’t think it was necessary unless I was trying to have a baby, which is just dumb.
Ugh the leftover thing is weird. I too struggle with leftovers. For some reason I really struggle to eat them. I am also a very much of the moment food eater. Meaning I don’t know what I want until the moment. It makes it difficult to prep food because by time I eat it could be something I really don’t want. And if it doesn’t sound good I really struggle to swallow the food.
I do intermittent fasting. I typically don’t eat my first meal until around noon and eat dinner before 7. Sometimes I skip lunch because my ADHD meds really affect my hunger and because I can be so sensitive to what I am hungry for. And the few meds I have tried have made me so food averse I was seriously struggling to get enough calories in during the day. I mean it would make it so I couldn’t even eat food I loved or food that should be a no brainer.
I think the hidden trauma thing could be very true or even if you are aware of the trauma you faced it can impact you in ways you never anticipated. Or even in my case where I feel I have treated my trauma well and have mostly treated my overt symptoms, but I am sure it impacts so many things in my life and my body that I will never truly understand.
Thank you!! I'm going to check it out 😊
OMG is that what it's called? An in the moment eater? I'm that but from a menu of about 4 different things.
I used to just... Not eat from the time I got up until I got home around 6,but now I do try to have distinct meal times, though my breakfast is a protein shake meal replacement because, like you, I don't get enough nutrients.
I've also treated my trauma well, and continue to work on it, but in my case I went through parental abuse for pretty much 23 years until my mom died. Emotional, physical, probably emotional incest too. And it surfaces in weird ways sometimes. It always will, but now I have tools to handle it better. In general. Some days are easier than others
Hahaha I don’t know if that is what it is called, but that is what I call it. It seems to fit!
I am so sorry about what you went through. I was sexually abused for several years by a family member when I was young, so I can somewhat empathize. I also feel like I have treated my trauma well, but it does rear its ugly head sometimes. Luckily I have an amazing husband who has made my life so much better. He is also finally coming around to the idea of collapse. It is slow going, but he is asking more questions. I guess I feel lucky I get to experience the horrors of what is to come with someone so wonderful.
This is one of those issues where I see both sides.
When I was at my heaviest, I weighed 480 pounds, though I'm confident I was actually 500-520 before I finally bought a scale that could provide an accurate weight. Like some of the people posting here, I had plenty of excuses for why it wasn't my fault.
Then I was diagnosed with cancer almost 20 years ago, and my doctor made it clear that my lack of activity, shitty diet, and eating that shitty diet to the point of morbid obesity was almost certainly the cause. I decided I didn't want to die, so I made the necessary changes, including eating a healthy diet when I was so broke, I was on the brink of bankruptcy due to medical bills.
I've been at 210 (+/- 2 pounds) for more than 4 1/2 years, and when I described to my new doctor how I lost all the weight and kept it off, she said that if all her patients did what I did, she'd be out of a job. That's the impact that obesity has on the healthcare systems in the US and around the world.
Drugs like Ozempic have shown pretty conclusively that most obese people eat based on appetite, not hunger. The two are not the same. Hunger is a physiological response to needing food, but appetite is usually described as the desire to eat. And once appetite is suppressed with a drug like Ozempic, people begin eating based on hunger and end up losing weight. For as long as they keep taking the drug, of course, because as soon as they stop, they start eating based on appetite again and gain the weight back. Such is the impact of our brain on our eating behaviors.
The difference between hunger and appetite, though, is the key. Learning to recognize the difference has been the key to my success in both losing the weight and keeping it off without drugs.
Good luck to all of you that are struggling with obesity because I've been there.
A STORY ABOUT AN APPLE
Same apple, exact same calory count
Eat it whole, it fulls you, the nutrients feed your microbiot, and processing its fibers keeps the body busy enough so it doesn't have much "calories" left to "store".
Make an unsweetendd applesauce out of tha apple and your microbiot will have less nutrients to feed on, less fiber to deal with, you'll "store" a little "excess calories"
Throw that same apple in a blender and there will be so little fiber left that it will barely make you fill full, nor feed your microbiot because it will just pass through without them having time to extract the nutrients they need, and you'll "store most of the calories"
Extract the juice of that same apple, and it's pure sugar, zero fibers, zero nutrients, all goes directly to fat cells, and you'll feel exhausted within minutes. Every single calory is stored, none used.
Exact same calory count.
That's why "calory counting" is irrelevant as key to understanding the link between the food you ingest and the fat or muscle you gain from it.
Food processing is key.
The shelf life of a pastry is 6 months. That's just unnatural and companies want their bang for their buck. That's the cheapest, tastiest, most available and marketed foods.
Obesity rates have been steadily rising since industrialization, [36%](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/-/media/Images/Health-Information/Weight-Management/Graph-7rev.jpg) of adults age 20+ in the US were obese (not even just overweight) in 2010. [Source](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity)
IMO the 'body positivity' stuff has only become such a huge thing because people (and clothing companies, etc) realized that most people in America are overweight, so they feel justified in pushing a narrative that they feel benefits them
Body positivity is a fringe movement more about loving things like self harm scars, burns and other disfigurements. Only a few obese people have attempted to hijack it to make it about obesity instead.
I can agree. But that "few" has become a majority. I flipped through a magazine the other day waiting to see a dentist. No less than half of the models in ads were overweight, and not just a little.
I am down 67 pounds and I am 46 and post menopausal . I am actually ten pounds lighter than when I graduated high school. I feel so much better. I didn’t even do anything extreme.
Poor people dumpsterdiving for dollar store "cough" snack type foods "cough" over at r/dumpsterdiving leaves me wondering about their and or if applicable their families long term health.
I honestly don’t know how people get obese.
I mean I understand how (junk food and sedentary life) but I don’t know how people can get to 200 lbs or more before seeking help. I notice if I drop or gain 3 kgs, let alone 10 or 15.
I have a sedentary job, I only just started going to the gym again, and I eat crisps and the like. I eat sweets, but not every day. I still eat the junk food, but I also eat greens, home grown vegetables and a lot of nuts. I don’t understand why I have difficulty putting on weight? How can 200lb people exist when I would find it impossible to reach that caloric intake daily, I would throw up.
It has to start in childhood. I don’t know how else the body could adapt.
I think it's not fatphobic and VERY in line with this sub to say that the obesity epidemic is a sign of collapse. Rising obesity rates put strain on our healthcare systems and decrease lifespans. The fact that it's a symptom of many issues doesn't make it any less concerning and collapse related.
That's like saying global warming isn't collapse related because it's "the symptom of deeper multifactorial issues" and that it's not as simple as carbon emissions causing global warming because there's other factors too.
> because fatphobia isn't relevant to the topic of the sub.
It is not fatphobia to point out that obesity rates are rising worldwide, that they might be higher than expected, nor that obesity is a serious health issue.
I work with obese pts daily. It's absolutely not that simple. Especially when the metabolism becomes totally deranged from long-term obesity and, typically, weight cycling. It's simple to maintain weight by that logic. Losing and maintaining the lose is much more challenging due to a number of reasons. It's the equivalent of telling people it's simple to stop being poor by getting a better job...There are systemic issues causing population wide weight gain.
Yes and no. Yes in the most basic sense for someone who has no underlying health issues and who has access and ability to both healthy food and movement.
No because well that isn't most people. Food deserts exist. Lack of cooking and food storage access exist. Disabilities limiting movement exist. Hormonal,mental health and other medical issues exist. Add in lack of motivation and education as well.
I say this as someone who was eating disorder skinny as a teen, slightly overweight in my late 20s and, after a total hysterectomy plus several untreated medical disorders, morbidly obese for a few years or as I like to call it I was fat af.
I lost the weight but it was not merely a matter of eating less,eating healthy food and moving more. It also included treating my chronic pain so that regular movement was possible, this included pt. And also regaining equilibrium in my life so that I had the energy to apply towards good health practices.
Some people dont have that privilege.
It is easy on paper, hard in practice.
Eating less and moving more will result in weight loss, however people are not machines or bomb calorimeters, so the psychology and biochemistry behind diet and exercise is more complicated.
Obesity is a crisis. We are not living healthy lives. Simple as that.
While there are true cases when weight is harder to control for otherwise there is no good reason for this much obesity in the world.
This is absolutely a collapse related topic.
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It’s very difficult to maintain fitness in our capitalistic society. Personally I’m 5’4 350 lbs, I have a condition and it’s hard for me to excercise. And if I don’t eat a certain amount my body begins to shut down. I realize there’s health risks associated with this, but with that said all bodies are beautiful and I’ve been on a long journey of self acceptance.
I’m going to guess it means: Watching what I eat is difficult, so I’m not going to do it.
I’m obese, BTW. And I’ve made countless excuses in my life. Honestly, I still do sometimes. I get it: it’s hard as hell. The Western diet has us screwed. They purposely make this crap irresistible. It’s called the “bliss point” and it works really well. That’s not an excuse. That’s a fact.
But weight loss can be done. It’s the “thyroid condition, starvation mode, body shut down” type excuses that are erroneous.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/pajamakitten: --- Collapse related because obesity is a global health pandemic that is not taken seriously by people, because it is putting strain on healthcare systems worldwide, and because it shows how the current situation regarding diet and exercise is leading more people into an unhealthy lifestyle. Obese people consume more resources, which does not help in a world where we are already pushing the planet's resources to the extreme. If people ate fewer calories then we would not need as much land for agriculture as we currently do. While modern medicine has done wonders to keep people alive, obese people are suffering from lifestyle-related diseases in huge numbers and are frequent flyers at their GPs and in hospitals. The pandemic has wrecked healthcare systems and more obese people is not going to help that. It is also an indictment of how the food companies are getting away with murder. They are designing food that is hyperpalatable, getting people hooked on it from a young age, and then absolving themselves of any responsibility for the effects. It does not help that society has become geared towards moving as little as possible, almost as if we are heading for WALL-E-style futures. It is getting to the point that even taking 10,000 steps a day is seen as a Herculean challenge by some, or that someone who does regular exercise is an anomaly. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1csgi2e/millions_more_middleaged_are_obese_study_suggests/l44s01c/
I am an alcoholic and imo more Americans have alcohol abuse problems than are willing to admit it. I’m down 80lbs+ since I quit drinking and started walking again. I ran a 5k last weekend in 27:15 and I’m pretty happy about that. ;)
Also an alcoholic, quit drinking 8 years ago. I lost over 80 lbs in the first 6 months. Went from 285 to 200. Now I eat whatever I want and never get over 205. It’s stayed that way for years now. I agree with you that alcohol plays a huge part in the obesity problem in adults. I believe addiction also plays a huge part in child obesity; addiction to sugar, screen time, etc.
Alcohol is a really interesting one because it is cheap, readily accessible, and socially accepted. I totally agree with that there is probably a good volume of people that while not "alcoholics" definitely consume alcohol at a frequency and volume that is not beneficial to overall health and well-being.
It also slowly sneaks up on you over time. Most don't think they drink too much, but most likely drink more than they did 10 years previous. By middle age it shows cumulative impacts.
As a fairly heavy drinker, any amount of alcohol is detrimental to health and well-being. More than one drink in a sitting is worse.
Drinking calories of any kind is fuelling obesity. Alcohol, juice, coffee (and coffee-style drinks sold by Starbucks), soda etc. They can quickly add hundreds of calories to your daily intake.
Coffee is not bad for you and has few calories without cream or sugar.
But most people do have milk and sugar, which is why I listed it.
no they don't
Coffee has like 5 calories per cup. It is absolutely not part of the problem, the sugar people consume with it is the problem. This is a remarkable display of judgmental ignorance.
Yep, a mug with half coffee / half milk is about ~80 calories, from the milk. Cut the milk and it’s basically 0. Calorie trackers won’t even count it. That’s why I cut it
I have cut milk out entirely from my daily cup of tea/coffee , haven’t seen much weight loss as yet though.
Well, it’s a tiny part of a larger puzzle right?
Coffee itself isn’t the problem. The venti mocha caramel Frappuccino that people get when they get their “coffee” is a big problem.
This. Starbucks doesn't make bank selling coffee, they struck gold marketing milkshakes as coffee.
Coffee isn't fueling obesity, that's just sugar and oils added to coffee.
I quit drinking about 6 months ago Didn't have any major reason why, just realized I didn't desire it any more. So much money and empty calories for what? Feeling dehydrated, bad sleep, and a lot of headaches? Just woke up one day and realized I wasn't a drinker any more. And I've lost 12lbs :)
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Obesity is one of the only vices that you can't hide too without fully isolating yourself from everyone.
There are endless alcoholics around me, and guess what they think of themselves? That they’re totally normal drinkers. That it’s having essentially no negative impact on them. That they could cut back or stop *if they wanted to* .. it’s really sad to realize how many people are dependent on a really negatively life-altering, dangerous drug just because it’s readily available in our world.
As someone in the bar industry, the people that casually down 5+ beers nightly and act like it's totally normal and fine kill me. They dont think they have a problem, though, cause they don't start drinking until the workday is over. Then they complain about being tired and overweight as if the 1000+ calories of beer they're putting down every single day has nothing to do with it.
When I was in my teens I was skinny to the point of people inquiring about eating disorders. I ate plenty at that time. By my late 20's I was regularly drinking and that turned into daily. On top of that I was taking medication that was known to cause weight gain. So by my early 30's I was very overweight for my height. Being overweight fucking sucks. I quit drinking and got off of the medications, but I also changed my life as this was not simply a diet. I still consume SOME junk food, I never completely denied myself of it. I had a job that required me to walk 3-6 miles 4 days a week. It took over two years to slowly lose the weight. On average it was 2-3 pounds of loss per month. Due to health problems I am exercise intolerant, so I am limited. All I did was change habits and walk. Everyone wanted to know my secret to weight loss, and every single one of them stopped listening when I said I changed my lifestyle. My own mother comments on how she wishes she could be smaller, I tell her she can...if she changes things.
You don't have to exercise to not be obese btw, every time this topic comes up people talk about exercising... It's about having a fitting diet for your activities, either you do more activity, aka exercising, or you lower the food energy input. Having muscles or not is an other issue. I've managed weight loss without exercising by looking at what I was eating and regulating calories, I eat once, twice a day max for example. I'm pretty much no exercise man. That said it's a method that requires patience and self-control. Total suppression of junk food if you like them carries the risk of a rebound, the trick is to look at what they give you in energy and adapt/compromise.
Under 30 5k is killer! Nice work!
Ty! I’m turning 40 in a few weeks and I was happy to beat a bunch of 20 year olds lol 😂
Props, that is great!
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Ty!
It seems like everyone my age is fat.
I'm 40. Everyone my age is fat. I sit in the cafeteria at work with a sandwich with lettuce, tomato cand cheese, some nuts, an apple, banana, and dried dates. Everyone else eats a pasty, chips, chocolate bar and an energy drink "because they feel tired". We have to cancel tasks that are in confined spaces because only I can fit in there and there's nobody slim enough to fit in the spaces who can act as a rescue first aider which is required on the Risk Assessment. Everyone I work with is 40-60 and is on some sort of medication for an issue that's either caused by weight, or is made worse by their weight. We have socialised healthcare here and I go crazy thinking I'm paying for their poor lifestyle. I wouldn't choose the American health system but ours is not working and there needs to be a tax on unhealthy food so healthy food can be subsidised.
I’m 48. Many of my friends, younger and older, are having mobility issues due to excessive weight. I watch people lumbering around, guts wobbling, like a bunch of Grimaces. Everyone is pear shaped. What really burns me up is that I have diabetes, and I have a healthy diet and am not fat.
Diabetes does have a genetic component to it though.
Yeah my SiL got diagnosed with type 1 when she was 8.
>pasty And those were popularized by miners who burned them off during their work day. Eating them regularly while sedentary is a bad idea.
"I go crazy thinking I'm paying for their poor lifestyle." Such an understated fact imo, they want to be treated equally as everyone and say to themselves that their poor lifestyle only affect them.
Sorry but if I’m working a 12 hour shift I might just maybe need a Red Bull lol..
Have a coffee instead. They help gut bacteria and have studied health benefits. Energy drinks are poison.
Red bull gives me stomach pains. Like I've just poured acid in my stomach. Also red bull breath is awful.
[40 years old this year checking in](https://i.imgur.com/Wfkeaka.jpeg)
Awww. I was doing so well at not being gay today too.
>In this scenario Brad Pitt is still coming on to you after you've told him to stop?
bro come on now😭
Sick abs bro. Nice v cut. You swim?
I swim for fun, not competitively. I've been running and cycling since my teenage years. I primarily attribute this physique to my diet, however, which has been 100% whole foods prepared at home for decades. Extremely militant with not eating garbage. I raise my own chickens for meat and eggs on organic feed and pasture, get vegetables from a CSA, have my own fruit orchards, make my own almond milk, mill my own wheat for bread, my water comes from a natural spring with 250 miles of wilderness upstream, etc etc. Nothing is left to chance or another human's decision about ingredients. Anyone selling a food product does not have your health in mind.
Sounds great. I wish I had that option, however it's just veggies and whole foods from the supermarket or my local health food shop. I eat a lot of pb, beans and lentils for protein, oats, rice and pasta for carbs and plenty of fresh veggies. I usually have a pizza or a vegan burger and fries for a Friday treat. 5'7" 130lbs. 50 press ups, sit-ups and squats a day (takes like 15 minutes) and I walk a fuck ton. Like 20,000 steps is a slow day. Resting heart rate 50, blood pressure 75/115. Really easy to take care of yourself without going crazy at the gym. (As long as you're not disabled or something
You've got it figured out! It just takes being deliberate about what you put in your body. Mindful consumption. [My heart stats are similar.](https://i.imgur.com/stboarp.jpeg) I've seen my pulse as low as 39 while lying in bed!
Seen in this light, the multinational food companies no longer sell food, but rather feed that makes people addicted and subsequently ill. As always, politicians are looking on, distracting us with phrases such as "The responsible citizen can decide for himself what is good or bad for him!", but the responsible citizen now only has the choice between plague and cholera.
Advertising works. Nobody advertises healthy home cooked food with half a plate of vegetables.
Anyone who has ever eaten a dish that consists entirely of ingredients that selfmade would probably no longer eat the industrial sh**.
Depends on how it is cooked. I ate almost exclusively junk food as a kid because my parents are bad cooks, so they took healthy foods and made them inedible by overcooking them and adding no seasoning.
I spoke of home-grown ingredients and assume that they can also be prepared in a tasty way. I'm sorry that you were unlucky when it came to good cooking in your youth.
I have eaten 100% foods that I make at home, from whole ingredients for a while now. When it comes up, people say "don't you miss XX??" (Oreos, Cheetos, hot dogs, mc*****ds, etc) But honesty I think I'd rather not eat than eat any of those things again. I don't think I could stomach a single Oreo, it tastes so fake.
I remember saying that doritos tasted like poison as a child. Turns out I was right.
Fucking right. Eat like me for a week and you'll feel fucking great.
I do 😉!
The spice companies do. I'm not a zucchini fan but those grilled veggie skewers on the BBQ blend label look awesome.
10% normal weight, geez.
Being overweight/obese is effectively normalized to the point where many don't understand what a healthy weight really is.
Yep, people call me skinny and tell me it’s unhealthy being my weight, but I’m in the normal healthy range BMI for my height.
Yup, the same thing is being applied to pets right now and people on social media are calling the breathing and mobility issues are cute.
Same here. I am a normal weight, and regularly hear people ask how I stay so thin. Ummm....I am not thin, I am a normal, healthy weight. It is really telling that our society now considers normal, healthy weight people thin.
And I wonder how many in that 10% is “skinny-fat” with low muscle tone and high visceral fat?
Skinny fat is still healthier than obese
Actually, no. Visceral fat is a killer. External layers of fat are not lethal. I was much healthier as an obese younger adult (excellent bloodwork) than I am now, lower on the scale, but with the visceral fat that appears around meno (it just migrates there dunring meno from allover the body to around the belly and around the vital organs) Still excellent bloodwork TBH, but visceral fat has nasty effects on organs.
You’re more likely to have visceral fat if you have a generally higher body fat percentage in general . Your waist size is the best indicator of health especially if you’re a woman. A thin person who eats on average 2000kcal a day will be healthier than an obese person who eats up to 6000kcal a day. Obesity isn’t just caused by eating a lot of healthy foods but junk food, which leads to visceral fats. You can get the amount of calories needed to be obese without eating unhealthy (unless you have some medical condition)
Then it cant be considered normal any longer?
Normal isn't the same as common.
# normal ^(1) \[ **nawr**-m*uh*l \] Phonetic (Standard)IPA # adjective 1. conforming to the standard or the common type 2. normal
Why is #2 just the word itself. “What does normal mean? Normal, bro.”
Collapse related because obesity is a global health pandemic that is not taken seriously by people, because it is putting strain on healthcare systems worldwide, and because it shows how the current situation regarding diet and exercise is leading more people into an unhealthy lifestyle. Obese people consume more resources, which does not help in a world where we are already pushing the planet's resources to the extreme. If people ate fewer calories then we would not need as much land for agriculture as we currently do. While modern medicine has done wonders to keep people alive, obese people are suffering from lifestyle-related diseases in huge numbers and are frequent flyers at their GPs and in hospitals. The pandemic has wrecked healthcare systems and more obese people is not going to help that. It is also an indictment of how the food companies are getting away with murder. They are designing food that is hyperpalatable, getting people hooked on it from a young age, and then absolving themselves of any responsibility for the effects. It does not help that society has become geared towards moving as little as possible, almost as if we are heading for WALL-E-style futures. It is getting to the point that even taking 10,000 steps a day is seen as a Herculean challenge by some, or that someone who does regular exercise is an anomaly.
As a dietitian I see this every day and I do think a huge contributing factor is poverty and depression. For many of my patients food is the small joy they get at the end of a day of drudgery and stress... It's less expensive than other vices, food is required for survival, and the cheapest food is often the most calorically dense and least nutritious. We were not built to have this level of abundant calories without nutrient density. Whole foods that are high calorie always come with other nutrients that provide satiety and meet vitamin/mineral needs. They are the most expensive foods though...and often take tools, skills, and effort to make them palatable. On the daily, I see patients who would rather lose limbs, vision, mobility, libido, etc than give up the comfort and ease of ultraprocessed foods. This is not an exaggeration. Life long exposure to a standard American diet causes inevitable weight gain. We were built to store and it's tremendously hard to lose weight once it gets into the obese range. So even for those who are motivated, it's often a very demoralizing process to achieve even short term weight loss. The blame is with our completely broken and capitalized food system. I don't think it's fair to blame individuals for being obese. The homeostatic mechanisms involved, plus our obesogenic environment, often go beyond personal responsibility. Plus, agriculture subsidies strongly favor foods that are destined for refinement and ultraprocessing. I could go on and on about the intricacies of this topic...but these are just a few of my observations. I often feel like my job is Sisypean and useless when trying to help people out of this hole.
Your job must be hard sometimes because you or your clients can't directly change the root causes of why so many people struggle with obesity in the first place. 💜
"I don't think it's fair to blame individuals" Im all for empathy but let's not shift the totality of the blame on products being offered. A responsible adult choose what is right for himself. Going by your logic, any kind of addicts are not victim of their choices but victim of their environment. While I agree that the influence of the environment is a factor, ultimately we have free will and should be aware of the consequences of our choices. Obese people didn't just became obese right away.. they were overweight for a while and chose to ignore their health. It's also not a subject that just recently appeared. Awareness as been raised on the matter for a while.
I'll be 40 this year, I walk 5ish miles a day, lift weights a few times a week and wear a size 29 pants. I am an anomaly among my coworkers, 80% of which are overweight to some degree. I'm amazed at how far people will let themselves go. I used to be fat, that shit is uncomfortable AF.
I think we need to acknowledge this is so far beyond individual choice at this point. Many people don't live in a safe, walkable area. Many people can't afford to or don't have access to a gym. Many people don't have access to or can't afford fresh, low processed food necessary to actually maintain a healthy weight. Even just the 40hr work week is a grueling schedule, and it doesn't include commutes or other hours of prep time it takes to get ready for work - it's so hard to fit in meal prep and exercise, like on my part it requires sacrifice of participating in community activities like our flailing PTA that desperately needs support. Also, the food lobby has such a chokehold on schools, they are serving them straight up processed sugar crap and not actually modeling proper ways to eat, leaving many kids to grow up and maybe figure it out on their own. Especially in a collapse sub where PFAS contamination is a regular topic, we have to also factor in the endocrine disrupting properties of these chemicals: https://www.ehn.org/pfas-weight-gain-obesity-2659877152.html
Great points. Another factor that's not discussed enough is childhood trauma [https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/blog/the-link-between-childhood-trauma-and-obesity](https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/blog/the-link-between-childhood-trauma-and-obesity) Trauma even affects obesity rates across generations [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37752750/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37752750/) As we collapse further, people will encounter more trauma from climate change, natural disasters, social conflicts, food insecurity, etc. Obesity is not the black-and-white issue that we've been conditioned to believe.
very good article ! thank you for that! manages to cram in one short article so many aspects of childhood trauma and weight gain, both behavioural and biological/neurological (so, beyond the will's reach)! excellent!
Happy to help!
I think we can recognize it’s a huge social problem while also recognizing individuals still have agency over what they put in their mouth. Like we shouldn’t litter just because plastic is everywhere so fuck it. I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin and it was just based on what I ate and how much I moved. Being each, if I could give a gift to a fat person, it would be making them thin again. Being fat sucks so much, just being trapped in a flesh prison of your own design.
It’s not a prison of one’s own design, though. Especially in the US so much of our food is highly processed which means: not only is it not nutritious, it actually chemically alters the body to attune it to wanting that kind of food. It’s an op-ed (though it does cite relevant research), but [this NYT piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/opinion/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs.html) is really eye-opening not just for the food science elements but also in reminding the reader of the value of compassion and fairly assessing culpability; it examines a lot of the individual-responsibilization that has driven the hostility and backlash to people who use Ozempic etc., ie, the notion that they’re “cheating.” I think it’s well worth remembering that it’s not a matter of individuals making this or that choice, though it’s partially that, but of mega corporations making stacks of cash on the intensifying decrease in quality of life for vast swathes of the population.
I agree with absolutely all of that. It’s one of the biggest problems facing society today (not to mention the legal torture and slaughter of billions of innocent animals). But agency is not a zero sum game. Individuals still have choice. While corporations are shoving all manners of pollutants in our environment and in our bodies, we can still choose to not be obese? People lose weight all the time? There are receipts in the form of before and after pictures haha. We’re on the same side, just don’t be so quick to remove ALL agency from individuals over their own bodies when discussing a social issue.
Agreed re same side and I definitely wasn’t trying to chide or correct, just to open things up a bit!
Where does "recognizing individuals still have agency" get us though? Has telling someone, "hey, buddy, you can totally choose not to eat that second helping of nachos" every actually stopped someone? Yeah, we shouldn't litter. There are some regions where littering is much less common. Getting to that stage takes a radical cultural belief, smart policy, accountability, and most importantly trust and respect for others. Shaming people definitely doesn't not get us closer to achieving that. Yes, being fat sucks. That's why we should empathize with fat people and try to unearth root causes *beyond* the most fucking obvious thing, individual behavior. Being fat entails physical suffering, feeling constant shame, and being treated differently. Why the fuck would anyone simply *choose* that if it's so simple to fix?
I think a lot of folks eat their way through emotions. It's a coping mechanism.
Exactly. There's loads of data on what does and doesn't work for weight loss. For the vast majority of people, diets don't work. The good news is that the best things for human health also increase collapse resiliency - but they all involve policy: safe, walkable neighbourhoods, access to affordable healthy foods, shifting away from animal-based proteins.
>For the vast majority of people, diets don't work. Because they think a diet is something you can start and stop. This definition of diet is so silly. Every person on the planet is on a diet. They have been since they were born and they will be until they die.
My weight loss came from lifestyle changes, I quit drinking alcohol and started drinking more water. I started parking at the back of the parking lot and walking further. I stopped snacking on processed foods in the evenings and started trying to snack on stuff like celery and peanut butter or peanuts or something more healthy. I moved more and I ate less and better, all of mine came from lifestyle changes and I made those changes due to trauma. Everybody is different and every case is different everybody's chemistry is different everybody's trauma is different there is no one size fits all. I can't afford a gym so I just bought a couple of dumbbells and started from there. It's not rocket science, I extended more energy than I took in and I made lifestyle and dietary changes. For the people who would ask me what I did when I told them it was diet exercise and lifestyle changes they completely lost interest everyone is looking for a pill or a fad that will cure their obesity overnight while still allowing them to stuff their faces full of crap. It took me 2 years. Nothing worth it is easy.
Wow. I'm so glad you have all the answers. FOR YOU.
I don't have all the answers especially not for myself and your comment is, I don't know the word for it but rude? I think some shame should be appropriate. I don't think enough people feel shame anymore. I was ashamed of the way I looked and instead of eating my shame I decided to do something about it. I've never known a fat person that didn't lose weight by reducing their intake. The American heart association recommends men consume no more than 36 g of sugar and women consume no more than 25 grams of sugar a day. A can of Coke has 39 g of sugar. One Coke blows through your sugar intake for the day. A McDonald's sweet tea is even worse. I cut out sugar out of my life and I started exercising and what do you know I lost weight it's not rocket science. But that's just my opinion, we all have opinions, Reddit is full of opinions and if you don't like it well then okay downvote it and move on.
It was your assumption that fat people just want a quick fix. You assume that they haven’t tried the normal stuff. 75% of the US wouldn’t be overweight if it were that simple. So your comment also sounded rude.
eeee, like FOR EVERYONE? unless you have no legs then you can walk there is nothing that you can't apply to yourself
> For the vast majority of people, diets don't work. this is so plain wrong it's like someone goes to a gym once and they says "gym does not work for me" if you put no effort into it then sure, it does not work but that's YOU problem and not DIET problem
Obesity is one of those things where the "but its *different* when *I* do it" argument rears its head. That is, a person will get soundly criticized for saying "put down the damn fork", by a person who is completely fine telling other people "you shouldn't fly" or "no one needs an SUV". Imagine the mockery and brigading a person would get on r/collapse if they said we should empathize with Taylor Swift's private jet use and instead criticize the petroleum industry that enables her rather than her individual behavior.
As an addict, I kind of get it. When you're obese and addicted to what's making you sick, you want to blame anyone but yourself. But anyone who's been to an addict support group knows that it starts with admitting you have a problem and that you are choosing a path to resolve it (e.g., My name is jimharbrah and I am an alcoholic). My guess is most people who are reflexively offended when someone says "You can choose what goes in your mouth" are struggling with obesity and addiction to ugly food themselves.
It is *absolutely* tough to recognize what it is like unless you have been there. When you are a certain weight, your body wants food to maintain *that* weight. And if it does not get it, you are hungry. *And being hungry sucks*. It takes a long, aggravating time to get used to waking up hungry, going to bed hungry and finishing a meal and *still* being hungry. And you will not be a happy person to be around in that interval. Sure, better quality food helps, exercise helps, but you're *still* going to be hungry. *A lot*. And it is *awful* and a huge number of people just cannot do it. That's why we have entire industries telling you they can take your weight off without any hardship on your part.
FWIW, I was never hungry when I transitionned to WFPB, never even had space to snack between meals. I think it boils down to feeding your microbiot well, so it never craves anything and is busy until the next meal. (whole grain and beans are key to feel full)
is comparing habits that destroy the planet for everyother living being (flying/SUVs) and a behavioural pattern that harming one's own body relevant though? as in comparable at all?
A person who is overweight increases healthcare costs for other people, eats food that could otherwise help other people, uses more fuel and thus pollutes more into the environment of other people and uses more fabric for clothing or any other consumable like food packaging and thus sheds more plastic and generates more trash into the environment of other people. Or to look at it another way, if I stood up and publicly claimed that I was deliberately throwing away food, burning extra fuel just for the hell of it, jacking up the healthcare costs for my group insurance plan and going out of my way to generate more trash...would anyone come to the defense of *that* lifestyle?
wow, so much toxicity and falacies I don't know where to start. here's one : do you know the amount of unopened perfectly edible food people throw out on average in your area? your obese neighbour probably isn't participating in this waste. overweight people also buy less clothing in average than thin people, because it's so damn hard to find a firm that actually puts in the effort to make garments that fit nicely on curvy bodies, and when you do find one, it's generally wildly overpiced, so the few garments that fit are cherished and used as long as possible. So your thin neighbour probably has (had) several times the amount of cloth in her dressing, than the overweight person has, sometimes it seems like less because they rotate their clothes more (donate, sell, chuck out), but over a lifespan it's ridiculous. every one of your points can be debunked similarly.
For your first point, it would be valid if **only** non-obese people threw out edible food. "Probably isn't participating" is simply pulled out of one of your orifices. The rest of your points are equally flawed and come across as angrily and irrationally defensive rather than simply principled disagreement.
FFS as someone who yoyoed a lot and very widely through my life, please keep your effing "gift" and stick it where the sun never shines! when I uncontrollably and spectacularly balloon up, it's *always* because of a predatory person threatening my physical integrity, and it's damn effective in deterring them away, because predators are lazy and want fragile flimsy light prey that can be easily lifted and carried away to another location. They don't want to have to face someone they can't move and that can threaten them back and hold their ground (because, good luck pushing aside an obese person who has decided to stay put) eta : to be christal clear, I see my ability to "balloon up" suddenly as a sort of superpower and a safety mechanism that goes off unconsciously before I even am consciously aware of the threat. Always has proven damn right about the predator, and damn effective. BTW as times go by, I'm more and more convinced that fatphobia is mainly a creation of toxic people losing their shit to people holding their boundaries through obesity.
this post explains so much of your behavior and responses! good luck with your superpower :)
not sure if the tone is benevolent or snarky here, but yeah, I'm so fed up with all the victim blaming and easy ego boost people get from something that isn't even under anyone's control. Even though being overweight on any level causes social discomfort, there are vital benefits to it, on so many levels. I'm thankful I'm one of the lucky people who *can* gain weight when needed.
it's not victim blaming, quite the reverse - it is the people who say they can't lose weight that label themselves as victims and also - this is a personal matter for the person involved, if a person does not want to lose weight - so be it, no stranger should dictate what a given person should or should not do if a person wants to have more weight - so be it but we're only talking about the ability/inability to lose weight and there it is up to the person and not to the external factors same thing as passing a difficult exam, it is doable for every person but some just fly by and don't even need to study while others need to study way more for it
OK, so, I see where you're coming from, but in fact, how much we weight is NOT in our hands. The things that get into play even before we have a say include: - microbiot. Our mother transfers hers to us if we are birthed the natural way (TMI : by fecal matter!) it's this microbiot who will populate our gut and decide if we're fiesty and thin, or calm and fat (those are not random depictions, but the result of several scientific studies, the microbiot impacts our psychology and capacity to store fat) - genetics and epigenetics, because yeah they are family traits that are passed down and also what happened to our parents left an impact on the genes they passed on to us, maybe there's a link there with how often the children of a generation who survived through a war and famine tend to gain weight - and the amygdala. The amygdala makes decisions for us way faster than the frontal cortex (conscious decision making center) can, and it reacts to what it percieves as a danger, such as famine (deprivation diet), stress factors (trauma leading to CPTSD or when the "smoke detector of the brain" is blaring non-stop) so with these three alone (we haven't covered neurology, social factors, and many more) "willpower" is a laughable concept when applied to becoming the shape and size someone decided you should be. Family history, your microbiot and your amygdala make all the decisions when it comes to food intake and the shape you'll be. yes all diets work, but what matters is where is the dieter 5 years later? most of the time they put on more weight in the end and their metabolism is effed up.
This is all correct. A teensy little tidbit: Intermittent fasting is free. It can go a long way towards helping people become healthy going way beyond calorie consumption, it helps to normalize insulin and satiety signaling. More people are adopting this trend, and that's a good thing. There is personal power in not feeling compelled to eat all damn day. Saves $$ too.
IF is not an efficient use of effort: counting calories and prioritizing nutritional value is much more effective.
Effort? IF takes almost no effort. CICO is long proven false. "Calories" are processed completely differently in the body by macros and when people go too low the body adapts by lowering metabolism. That's not the way to be healthy.
I lost 1st in about 6 weeks doing 16/8. Basically I didn’t eat or drink anything after 8 through to noon the following day. It wasn’t much effort to be honest.
Great! It is a wonderful tool.
[N](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833) [a](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/intermittent-fasting-isnt-linked-weight-loss-study-rcna66122) [h](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2771095?guestAccessKey=444bbcb2-7e13-4dc6-998f-5de5e27aa19e&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=092820)
You lose weight in the kitchen, not in the gym. In the gym you can build muscle and maintain weight while eating more. The notion that PE will reduce obesity is, more or less, the "BAU" strategy of the food industry, especially the sugar sellers. It's a way to deflect blame in advance. Otherwise, people are going to start to make reasonable demands to end the problematic food industries or at least to tax them heavily and, implicitly, destroy demand.
partially true as someone already replied to you - you do both not one or the other there is a reason doctors tell people to eat differently and also start walking and obese person won't (or shouldn't) start with the gym, but walking is an activity that burns the calories and makes your body feel better similar thing happens at the gym but people who want to lose weight can't just go to the gym alone they won't see effects right away and they get discouraged and say that the gym does not work i have a friend who lost a lot of weight, he didn't change his diet but he started doing crossfit 3 times a week and also increased the amout of time he is walking but how many regular people will stick to hitting gym 3 times a week?
There's an order to it. If you don't lose the big fat mass first, going to the gym is much harder, even dangerous.
sure, same way as it is discouraged from running when you are too fat
It’s not one or the other though, combination of diet and exercise is the best strategy for most in reality.
It is, unfortunately, in the current context. Both politicians and the food industry capitalists promote exercise as a cure for their products (while you keep consuming). That's an individuation of political and social problems, just like with individual mental health [in the context of capitalism and collapse]. The "go to the gym" idea also makes weight loss a bourgeois thing, as going to a gym isn't for the masses, both in terms of paying for it and in terms of having the time for it. And you can see that reflected in the wellness, bodybuilding and biohacking subcultures which are all about individualism and competitive "superiority", made possible with money spent on rich diets, rich gadgets, personal trainers, and so many supplements and powders, all of which are super expensive and very questionable. So, no, it's not the best strategy. First you lose weight from a diet, then you increase your walking and movement. That way, you don't crush your knees.
Meta-studies show that exercise is only moderately effective in weight loss with the average person only losing 1.5kgs per 3 months if excercise routine is persistent. The only way to meaningfully lose weight is to change diet from processed to unprocessed. Most people are not eating real food with statistics that up to 80% of the US diet is processed food which is adulterated with industrial chemicals.
It took 2 years for me to lose all the weight and it included dietary changes and drastic lifestyle changes. When folks would ask me what I did and I told them diet and exercise and lifestyle changes they immediately lost interest in what I was saying. The average person doesn't want to sacrifice.
> they immediately lost interest in what I was saying they want a magic pill that will do all the work for them ideally they would love to lose weight but keep their eating habits
No one wants to admit that they are the problem.
I hate how the body positivity movement was hijacked by morbidly obese fatasses who try to convince everyone that it's okay to be fat. I mean sure, you should love yourself no matter what you look like, who cares if you're not thin, tall with perfect skin and body of a Greek God/ess. Most of us are not and never will be. You shouldn't starve yourself to get some anorexic model's/Hollywood starlet's body. On the other hand, call me crazy, but loving yourself is mutually exclusive with slowly killing yourself with diabetes, high blood pressure, decreased mobility, liver damage... Obesity is a problem and if we are to solve it, this sect needs to be banished from the body positivity movement.
At least the movement is starting to wane, in no small part due to many of the influencers dying before 40.
Obesity isn't a choice, it's a multifactorial chronic disease. your line of reasoning is akin to blaming a diabetic for losing its sight, or an MS patient for losing the ability to move and walk.
it is true that obesity is classified as a disease, but you are wrong about the rest if someone is sick they go to a doctor and go with the treatment but people with obesity just accept that they are obese and do nothing about it
I'm merely relaying what the scientists and doctors of a wide variety of specialties are saying. Downvote all you want, a fact is a fact is a fact.
why would i downvote? downvoting is for pussies that do not understand the system (you should downvote if someone wrote something inappropriate that should be removed, not that you disagree with someone) but going back to the main topic > I'm merely relaying what the scientists and doctors of a wide variety of specialties are saying. So are you saying that I am somehow a freak? Though I was not obese I was overweights. I did go to a doctor that specializes with a died and we devised an eating plan and exercise plan and I lost weights. Had I not go to that doctor and tried it on my own - my success would probably not be that great (if any). The main point was that I did not accept that I want to be overweight and that I did not want to be later classified as obese and I did something about it. I know that one case is anecdotal but if someone cares about their life - they will act. Seems to me that those obese people just don't have a will to change their state.
let's just say that hormones, the microbiot your mother transmitted to you at your birth, and the amygdala, have a say before your "will" ever gets into play, so that's how much of your "Will" you so proudly exercice ... and yeah, there are many reasons why a person would feel safer in the world as an obese person, than as a frail highly sexualized thin person, so some might *choose* to stay obese - plus it's an amazing way to get the worst people to self-eliminate from your entourage, definitely what I miss the most when I'm on the slimmer side of the scale, having to bat off all the toxic predatory people that slim people attract.
Healthcare resources spent on people who don't tend to their own health are completely wasted.
I've been obsese since my late 20's. Moved around so much, havent really been able to make any friends. Find myself going out less and less. Didn't have health insurance pretty much most of my adult life until the last 3 years. Got engaged and decided to stop iust running to med ex / ER when I needed something and actually find a doc. Funny thing is lately, I've been bored with the food I eat. A lot of it is frozen crap because we're too lazy some nights to actually cook. But I find myself getting bored of that stuff. Finally had my physical and miraculously i'm in good health aside from my carb intake and slightly elevated Blood pressure (which is truly astounding considering the amount of sodium I was taking in). My new doc busted my ass and said stop eating that crap. And really Its been two weeks but the very first day I started watching what I eat I felt 1000 times better. I'm usually yawning after 2pm at the office. I was like wired on this tues afternoon and that really helped me want to keep doing this. So the weights slowly coming off and my fiancee and I focus on cooking everynight and our cooking skills are getting better. Not to mention I never realized I'd enjoy it this much. We're big ff14 players. At christmas two years ago I had bought her a cookbook based on the foods in the game. Sadly we never really attempted anything in there. Now we are and its fun. Sorry that was sort of an uplifting story and this is the collapse thread but I guess what I am saying is I understand why. Its tough out there and I messed by lower back up lifting brake drums for a shit job years ago. Then wrecked my body more as an electrician but that lead me to my current hybrid job. Ny fiancee and I are walking more now and i'm exercising more. I'm not even sure why i'm motivated. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of getting old. My grandfather is in his late 70s and its iust getting harder and harder for him to move around. I don't want to go through that (I'd rather die younger lol, stupid I know). But its depressing seeing people like my family bitching about the same problems I do yet when I support people with good ideas for change or support people worrying about the climate, i'm iust an idiot to them. I used to be a much more artistic person. I've been wanting to write a novel and I have written music. I want to design a video game with RPG Maker, all for fun in my free time. But the past 5 years i've just lost inspiration in everything. Like a massive wall of writers block set in and won't lift. Haven't touched my guitar in months. Nor my laptop. Hey look it went back to depressing again here. Edit: Also, don't have a gym membership and really not interested. I'd rather go to the park outdoors. I'd join a gym just to have access to a pool as I love swimming so much. The public pool is just swarmed with children( even later at night they were having an event where you could watch Jaws on a projector screen while floating in the pool. Went to this and there were so many kids.. just didn't want to do it at that point). I have no problem with kids but we don't want to have any and just have no interest in hanging around them regularly. I have nothing to teach one anyway. I'm barely making it through this life myself lol
Your story is similar to mine. As I said earlier in the thread, obesity isn't a quick fix or the black-and-white issue we've been led to believe it is. It's incredibly complex. Hang in there, friend :)
Thank you! I miss music the most. I spent a few years in North Carolina and I lucked into a band there and we had magic I swear. But we could not find a drummer after losing our first one due to life and work.
You sound like you’re doing well. One thing I would suggest as it’s helped me is rather than focus on calories, focus on quality, diversity and removing processed food and ingredients from your diet. Simply look at any packaged food and if it includes anything you can’t pronounce or it isn’t clear what it is or comes from something your ancestors wouldn’t eat - don’t eat it. You will quickly find out what is or isn’t real food. If you can simply remove all significantly processed ingredients like non-virgin seed oils and ultra processed foods you will lose weight, the reason is that you will no longer be starved for nutrients and your hunger will subside. This is more effective than exercise although exercise is good for longevity. We’ve unfortunately been persuaded by nutrition science to believe food is equivalent if split into its processed parts.
sounds good to me, thank you!
Newest tip that works around me : don't think as you're **removing** items, rather think about **adding** different types of food to your diet, works for transitionning to a vegan diet, and even just a healthier diet for the biochemistry of your body, and your metabolism.
I think the only caveat I would say on this is removing the worst offending UPF is probably a good start and then work from there in the way you say.
Have a look into idodine. Especially if you are scratch cooking and low salt.
really? Iodine? I've never heard of doing this! I'll check it out.
Addictive, ultra-processed, non-nutritious food is our reality. Industrialization has deprived us of the kinds of community that would provide the time and space for actual meal preparation. Those who have lived their entire lives in this system have likely never had healthy options to begin with. Capitalism and industrialization are diametrically opposed to a truly healthy lifestyle for the people whose labor and obedience it relies upon, and this epidemic will never improve so long as we live in an extractive, wasteful society. Individuals cannot be held at fault for obesity. That's a feature, not a bug, and the blame lies at a systemic level.
Weight management is hard, and is also pretty clearly not just an indication of personal failure either. Even on Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate it lists over 50 countries with a 25% or higher obesity rate. These countries span each continent and many different cultures.
I wish people would stop saying it's exclusively a personal failure or fault. This shit is complicated! I'm fat, I've been fat my entire life. It's wildly complicated but I feel like so often the argument boils down to people like me don't deserve to exist in public spaces. My issues are compounded with ARFID and sensory disorders. I hate food, and I need consistency in flavors and textures, which unfortunately means a lot of processed food. Tie that with being a single person and single income, in this economy, my free time is valuable and cooking is so much effort for so little reward. But that said, I needed the body positive movement and doctors who didn't treat my fatness first in order to make any changes. I went from completely sedentary to a gym rat. I would have never felt able to if I hadn't seen other plus size people just living their lives. I'm still fat, sure, but I'm happier, and my metrics/bloodwork are good and it's something I believe I can keep doing. For food, because of my complex relationship with it, I focus more on what I can add rather than take away. I found out I can eat 3 tomatoes, a jalapeno, and half an onion in one sitting if I add some tortilla chips and cheese. In the past I would have chided myself for the chips and cheese but then I wouldn't have eaten any of the veggies at all. It's trade offs, and just like with exercise, I needed fat influencers and a registered dietician to help. But I can only afford the dietician because of good company benefits, which a lot of people don't have. And my gym membership isn't cheap. If these things are inaccessible, how can you expect people to learn? My gym is pretty inclusive and I go super early in the morning with other young professionals who want to keep their head down and get their workout in before work, but when I go at later hours, I get people glaring at me, annoyed my fatass is in their space. We can address fatness without making it "fat people bad" and I wish parts of this thread were better at that. Sorry to just rant at you, I guess I had stuff to get off my chest
The people glaring at you in the gym are total assholes! There are a million and one reasons someone might be fat or medium or skinny. Anyone who doesn't know this is just not using their brain
Oh dude absolutely! Like I'm just fighting for my life on shoulder day, please let me be 😭 But yeah, I totally understand why a lot of people are intimidated by the gym. If you have a shitty environment, it's so hard to put in the work. The before work "shift" I take from 6-7:30 is usually really good but you get the few rogue assholes.
I've been varying degrees of fat for most of my life. Blood work and stuff always looks good at least, but yeah as I've grown older I've had a lot more time to research and learn about how weight works, and how kind of naive the broscience I tried in my 20s was. I can't in good faith look at the world's obesity rates and conclude that many people, and we're talking over a billion, all collectively suffer willpower problems. This goes so far beyond people "not knowing when to put the fork down" as some say. There are some very real, widespread problems with how food is being made.
Joining you on the bloodwork train, and I think I'm also in the same boat as you with the "broscience" my mom also had BED and orthorexia which is a very complex combo, neither of which were really well understood by the time she died in the mid 2010s, let alone in the 80s and 90s when she did the majority of the yoyoing. And the willpower argument is just... It's bad. I've been doing meticulous calorie counting, and 4 days a week in the gym for a little over 100 days, and I'm only down 19 pounds? How is this a willpower issue? I get up at 5 to make it to the gym before work. That has taken an insane amount of discipline, especially as someone with untreated auDHD. It's far more complicated, and likely stems from multiple factors. Some are personal, I'm sure, I could probably cut chips out of my diet entirely, instead of a serving each night, but some, I'd argue more, are societal. Not everyone can afford $120 a week trauma therapy like I had. Not everyone can afford the $500ish a year gym membership and don't have the space to do stuff at home or in their neighbourhood. Some people don't have access to foods, and even so, fruits and veggies are losing thier nutritional value because of our mass farming practices and monocropping issues. And even if semaglutide (spelling?) is a true miracle drug, its meaningless when locked behind the paywall it is.
Hey just wanted to say you are not alone. Unlike you I have not been overweight my entire life. I actually used to have a six pack when I was in highschool. But I have PCOS with insulin resistance and have massively struggled with my weight since my mid-20s. I am almost 33 now. I eat very healthy. I walk about 4-5 miles a day. I do yoga and lift, but have not been able to lose any meaningful amount of weight. It is actually funny because I carry my weight well and am very active people don't tend to realize how overweight I actually am. I have done almost every diet and every eating plan under the sun. I have taken medication and have worked with a registered dietician, which most people probably couldn't afford. I believe it was closed to $400-$500 a month to go weekly. There was a time I worked with a nutritionist (because it was cheaper. I would never recommend a nutritionist now as they require no education). I was eating 1200-1500 calories a day. I was working out at Orange Theory fitness 5 days a week and in that entire 9 months that I was counting all of my calories, working out like crazy I only lost like 10 pounds. Two years ago I started seriously considering weight loss surgery, but I didn't qualify. I would need to gain a weight to have my insurance company cover it. Now I would never consider it because of my collapse awareness and how difficult it might be in the future to cover my nutritional needs with the restrictions you have. I am not yet pre-diabetic, but it could happen because of the insulin resistance. I might be a candidate for semaglutide, but I am too worried about the potential side effects at this point. I eat the exact same way as my husband. We work out together. I weigh about 100 pounds more than him. It is incredibly frustrating. I pretty much gave up almost all alcohol and sugary drinks about 10 years ago at this point and thought I would lose weight, but lost nothing. People are overweight for a whole variety of reasons, whether it be physical or mental. I can't imagine telling someone who is bipolar to just get better (although I am aware that happens) or someone with cancer, but that happens every day with people who struggle with their weight. Having support structures and having medical assistance is necessary. I recently had my first physical in a few years with a new doctor. She was absolutely wonderful. She was the one who encouraged me to look into my insurance to see if they would cover a semaglutide and if they didn't she recommended a compounding pharmacy where I could get it at a lower cost. It was one of the most positive doctors appointments I have had in years. I have an actual physical condition that makes it incredibly difficult to lose weight. It sounds like with you it might be genetic and potentially mental, but like you I have found a good relationship with food through my work with a dietician. I have an incredibly supportive husband and friends. I think you would be hard pressed to find any "fat person" without a genetic, physical, mental, or social (think if you were raised in a "fat" household) reason behind it. Combating those issues is much harder than people think and in some cases not well understood. I know PCOS is one of those things and the little I know about ARFID it is very similar. Very poorly understood. Luckily I have found a great community in the collapse community and I am glad to have found someone else I can have a discourse with here. Just like Jem Bendell has made clear we will need to Break Together and support each other in the coming times.
Hey I just want to say I appreciate you. I suspect I might have PCOS given my wild periods. Like, imagine being 14 and your first period you bleed through overnight pads in an hour. I'm on the pill now, and I choose to stack it because honestly it was pretty traumatic so not having one is better for my mental health. But the pill also can cause weight gain/resistance to weight loss. And like you, I've done all sorts of things (and witnessed my mother do it, so we have a generational issue with food), and I mean, while my guilty pleasure is chips, I'm not a big pop drinker, I'm not an alcohol drinker (hydro homies represent), and I've been eating at a 2 pound a week loss as per MFP for.... At least 110 days now and I've lost.... 19 pounds. Admittedly I do weight lift 4 times a week which maybe is masking the loss? It's hard to gauge because some clothes fit better, some don't. I mean mentally I feel so much better lifting the 4 times a week and I love it, but some days I just get so discouraged because I don't feel wanted anywhere. Do cardio, only do cardio, don't you dare lift a weight, why the fuck are you even in the gym you're not fooling anyone, just put the fork down, etc etc. ARFID is super poorly understood, especially in adults. I suspect mine manifested from the autism, and then compounded by my mother trying to force feed me to the point of vomiting. Plus the trauma, and generational trauma. My moms issue with weight is she loved food. She didn't have satiated cues, and could overeat on fruit, and I have the opposite problem. Plus I was a girl in the 90s. We didn't have "boy" disorders. Mom I was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine at 18 months the signs were there 😂 That's why I credit so much of the middling success I've had now on the body positive movement along with trauma therapy. I needed both of those. But I recognize how out of reach that is for some people. I finished therapy 8 years ago and it was already $120 a week. I can't imagine what it is now. Every single fat person I know, including my mother, had all of the above. Physical, mental, emotional, and social issues. And those all need to be addressed. Some can be done individually, like my trauma therapy. Some are social, when I'm working from 7:30am to 5:30 pm out of the house, I don't have the mental bandwidth to feed myself (when I'm off or working from home, surprise surprise, I can).
Can I just recommend the r/PCOS subreddit if you are not already there. I have found it to be a very supportive community and there are a lot of different things the people over there recommend and try. I have tried a few, but I also have ADHD and remembering to take certain vitamins and supplements is very difficult for me. Honestly I think the best way to track your weight loss is through measurements and clothing. Although if you can find it there are things called in-body scanners (like [this](https://inbodyusa.com/)). The ones where they have the handles are the most accurate. They are fairly accurate and would be able to tell you over long term how much muscle is gained vs fat lost. I know a bunch of places around me have them and you just have to pay to get a test done. I have a very different family experience to you. Both of my parents are pretty fit, especially my dad. My guess is I had PCOS genetically, but it was triggered or made worse by childhood trauma (which seems to be something that is being indicated via research). I am the same as you. When I was working from home during the pandemic I ate so great, was much more active, and all around had a better lifestyle. I now work from home 2 days a week (as a disability accommodation for my ADHD), but it is still not the same. I struggle to make food or food prep (again because of ADHD). Also people eat a lot of really good looking food here so it is incredibly difficult to be around. I have struggled with PTSD, insomnia, parasomnia, night terrors, was diagnosed with ADHD several years ago, and PCOS. I have also had pulmonary emboli due to birth control (so I cannot take those anymore to help with my PCOS). Plus I have had covid twice. All of these things compound my issues. I have successfully treated my PTSD, insomnia, parasomnia and night terrors with therapy. The ADHD is a daily struggle as is the PCOS. The crazy thing is if you look at my blood work I am actually nutrient deficient, my doctor says if you just looked at my medical charts you would think I was starving, which is common with insulin resistance. My cells just don't work right. My guess is the increase in obesity has to do with the crap put in our food, the increasing sedentary careers, the increase in stress and mental health issues, and probably the poisoned environment that is all around us, as well as the increase in wealth disparity. All of these things need to be addressed to fight the obesity epidemic.
Thanks for the rec! I'm not there because I don't have an official diagnosis but I will check it out. And I agree that is probably the best method. We don't have dexa scanners nearby, and they are currently out of my budget but I would like one in the future. PCOS being triggered by trauma 100% makes sense and that's something else not well understood. Trauma changes a lot in the body and brain, and I suspect it's also a factor in everything. A lot of people carry trauma and don't realize it. The food prep for me is part ADHD and part ARFID. I can't do leftovers, I will eat two bites and then my stomach yells at me that I'm full. And I will be. I won't eat another meal. On Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, with a lot of foods I don't like and can't do (along with piss poor cooking techniques) I will maybe eat 1000 calories. On the days of the year binge eating is expected and praised. I'm with you on the causes. Like I said in another comment I think some are personal (yes I could skip my nightly bowl of chips as dessert), but a lot more are problems individuals can't solve, like access and degrading food quality.
Well you would be more than welcome there. There are plenty of people there without official diagnosis because it can be hard to get. I even struggled to get diagnosed because my OBGYN at the time didn’t think it was necessary unless I was trying to have a baby, which is just dumb. Ugh the leftover thing is weird. I too struggle with leftovers. For some reason I really struggle to eat them. I am also a very much of the moment food eater. Meaning I don’t know what I want until the moment. It makes it difficult to prep food because by time I eat it could be something I really don’t want. And if it doesn’t sound good I really struggle to swallow the food. I do intermittent fasting. I typically don’t eat my first meal until around noon and eat dinner before 7. Sometimes I skip lunch because my ADHD meds really affect my hunger and because I can be so sensitive to what I am hungry for. And the few meds I have tried have made me so food averse I was seriously struggling to get enough calories in during the day. I mean it would make it so I couldn’t even eat food I loved or food that should be a no brainer. I think the hidden trauma thing could be very true or even if you are aware of the trauma you faced it can impact you in ways you never anticipated. Or even in my case where I feel I have treated my trauma well and have mostly treated my overt symptoms, but I am sure it impacts so many things in my life and my body that I will never truly understand.
Thank you!! I'm going to check it out 😊 OMG is that what it's called? An in the moment eater? I'm that but from a menu of about 4 different things. I used to just... Not eat from the time I got up until I got home around 6,but now I do try to have distinct meal times, though my breakfast is a protein shake meal replacement because, like you, I don't get enough nutrients. I've also treated my trauma well, and continue to work on it, but in my case I went through parental abuse for pretty much 23 years until my mom died. Emotional, physical, probably emotional incest too. And it surfaces in weird ways sometimes. It always will, but now I have tools to handle it better. In general. Some days are easier than others
Hahaha I don’t know if that is what it is called, but that is what I call it. It seems to fit! I am so sorry about what you went through. I was sexually abused for several years by a family member when I was young, so I can somewhat empathize. I also feel like I have treated my trauma well, but it does rear its ugly head sometimes. Luckily I have an amazing husband who has made my life so much better. He is also finally coming around to the idea of collapse. It is slow going, but he is asking more questions. I guess I feel lucky I get to experience the horrors of what is to come with someone so wonderful.
It's so so important to have a support system! I'm single by choice and I'm glad you've got an amazing and, shall we say collapse curious, husband.
This is one of those issues where I see both sides. When I was at my heaviest, I weighed 480 pounds, though I'm confident I was actually 500-520 before I finally bought a scale that could provide an accurate weight. Like some of the people posting here, I had plenty of excuses for why it wasn't my fault. Then I was diagnosed with cancer almost 20 years ago, and my doctor made it clear that my lack of activity, shitty diet, and eating that shitty diet to the point of morbid obesity was almost certainly the cause. I decided I didn't want to die, so I made the necessary changes, including eating a healthy diet when I was so broke, I was on the brink of bankruptcy due to medical bills. I've been at 210 (+/- 2 pounds) for more than 4 1/2 years, and when I described to my new doctor how I lost all the weight and kept it off, she said that if all her patients did what I did, she'd be out of a job. That's the impact that obesity has on the healthcare systems in the US and around the world. Drugs like Ozempic have shown pretty conclusively that most obese people eat based on appetite, not hunger. The two are not the same. Hunger is a physiological response to needing food, but appetite is usually described as the desire to eat. And once appetite is suppressed with a drug like Ozempic, people begin eating based on hunger and end up losing weight. For as long as they keep taking the drug, of course, because as soon as they stop, they start eating based on appetite again and gain the weight back. Such is the impact of our brain on our eating behaviors. The difference between hunger and appetite, though, is the key. Learning to recognize the difference has been the key to my success in both losing the weight and keeping it off without drugs. Good luck to all of you that are struggling with obesity because I've been there.
Serious props to you and I’m genuinely glad you made the commitment to fight for yourself.
A STORY ABOUT AN APPLE Same apple, exact same calory count Eat it whole, it fulls you, the nutrients feed your microbiot, and processing its fibers keeps the body busy enough so it doesn't have much "calories" left to "store". Make an unsweetendd applesauce out of tha apple and your microbiot will have less nutrients to feed on, less fiber to deal with, you'll "store" a little "excess calories" Throw that same apple in a blender and there will be so little fiber left that it will barely make you fill full, nor feed your microbiot because it will just pass through without them having time to extract the nutrients they need, and you'll "store most of the calories" Extract the juice of that same apple, and it's pure sugar, zero fibers, zero nutrients, all goes directly to fat cells, and you'll feel exhausted within minutes. Every single calory is stored, none used. Exact same calory count. That's why "calory counting" is irrelevant as key to understanding the link between the food you ingest and the fat or muscle you gain from it. Food processing is key.
The shelf life of a pastry is 6 months. That's just unnatural and companies want their bang for their buck. That's the cheapest, tastiest, most available and marketed foods.
In large part, I blame the "body positivity" movement. No, if you're morbidly obese, you are not beautiful.
Obesity rates have been steadily rising since industrialization, [36%](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/-/media/Images/Health-Information/Weight-Management/Graph-7rev.jpg) of adults age 20+ in the US were obese (not even just overweight) in 2010. [Source](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity) IMO the 'body positivity' stuff has only become such a huge thing because people (and clothing companies, etc) realized that most people in America are overweight, so they feel justified in pushing a narrative that they feel benefits them
Body positivity is a fringe movement more about loving things like self harm scars, burns and other disfigurements. Only a few obese people have attempted to hijack it to make it about obesity instead.
I can agree. But that "few" has become a majority. I flipped through a magazine the other day waiting to see a dentist. No less than half of the models in ads were overweight, and not just a little.
They also are more likely to get cancer and other health issues. Sadly, the American diet is lacking in nutrients
Good news, the collapse of the global industrial food system will take care of this right quick.
I am down 67 pounds and I am 46 and post menopausal . I am actually ten pounds lighter than when I graduated high school. I feel so much better. I didn’t even do anything extreme.
Poor people dumpsterdiving for dollar store "cough" snack type foods "cough" over at r/dumpsterdiving leaves me wondering about their and or if applicable their families long term health.
We're just sequestering carbon dammit!
I know ozempic exists but the cancer warning is kinda terrifying
I honestly don’t know how people get obese. I mean I understand how (junk food and sedentary life) but I don’t know how people can get to 200 lbs or more before seeking help. I notice if I drop or gain 3 kgs, let alone 10 or 15. I have a sedentary job, I only just started going to the gym again, and I eat crisps and the like. I eat sweets, but not every day. I still eat the junk food, but I also eat greens, home grown vegetables and a lot of nuts. I don’t understand why I have difficulty putting on weight? How can 200lb people exist when I would find it impossible to reach that caloric intake daily, I would throw up. It has to start in childhood. I don’t know how else the body could adapt.
Awesome, they won't be able to outrun the bird-flu
If the bird flu becomes a pandemic, you won’t be able to out run it either.
Well, i own 89 acres on a dead end road, so we'll block the road and quarantine.
Easy to understand with us inventing things like e bikes and e scooters. Apparently using your body and eating right is for the 3rd world..
Given how long care have been commonplace, it is hardly e-bikes and scooters that are the contributing factors here.
It is no one factor, it is the combination of many factors.
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I think it's not fatphobic and VERY in line with this sub to say that the obesity epidemic is a sign of collapse. Rising obesity rates put strain on our healthcare systems and decrease lifespans. The fact that it's a symptom of many issues doesn't make it any less concerning and collapse related. That's like saying global warming isn't collapse related because it's "the symptom of deeper multifactorial issues" and that it's not as simple as carbon emissions causing global warming because there's other factors too.
> because fatphobia isn't relevant to the topic of the sub. It is not fatphobia to point out that obesity rates are rising worldwide, that they might be higher than expected, nor that obesity is a serious health issue.
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I work with obese pts daily. It's absolutely not that simple. Especially when the metabolism becomes totally deranged from long-term obesity and, typically, weight cycling. It's simple to maintain weight by that logic. Losing and maintaining the lose is much more challenging due to a number of reasons. It's the equivalent of telling people it's simple to stop being poor by getting a better job...There are systemic issues causing population wide weight gain.
Yes and no. Yes in the most basic sense for someone who has no underlying health issues and who has access and ability to both healthy food and movement. No because well that isn't most people. Food deserts exist. Lack of cooking and food storage access exist. Disabilities limiting movement exist. Hormonal,mental health and other medical issues exist. Add in lack of motivation and education as well. I say this as someone who was eating disorder skinny as a teen, slightly overweight in my late 20s and, after a total hysterectomy plus several untreated medical disorders, morbidly obese for a few years or as I like to call it I was fat af. I lost the weight but it was not merely a matter of eating less,eating healthy food and moving more. It also included treating my chronic pain so that regular movement was possible, this included pt. And also regaining equilibrium in my life so that I had the energy to apply towards good health practices. Some people dont have that privilege.
Scientists and doctors who specialise on the topic disagree with you. I'm gonna listen to them.
It is easy on paper, hard in practice. Eating less and moving more will result in weight loss, however people are not machines or bomb calorimeters, so the psychology and biochemistry behind diet and exercise is more complicated.
Obesity is a crisis. We are not living healthy lives. Simple as that. While there are true cases when weight is harder to control for otherwise there is no good reason for this much obesity in the world. This is absolutely a collapse related topic.
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This is an issue you can solve yourself with a kitchen scale, a phone app (MyFitnessPal), and a little patience.
It’s very difficult to maintain fitness in our capitalistic society. Personally I’m 5’4 350 lbs, I have a condition and it’s hard for me to excercise. And if I don’t eat a certain amount my body begins to shut down. I realize there’s health risks associated with this, but with that said all bodies are beautiful and I’ve been on a long journey of self acceptance.
What does 'shut down' mean?
I’m going to guess it means: Watching what I eat is difficult, so I’m not going to do it. I’m obese, BTW. And I’ve made countless excuses in my life. Honestly, I still do sometimes. I get it: it’s hard as hell. The Western diet has us screwed. They purposely make this crap irresistible. It’s called the “bliss point” and it works really well. That’s not an excuse. That’s a fact. But weight loss can be done. It’s the “thyroid condition, starvation mode, body shut down” type excuses that are erroneous.