Again, see the YTF thread in Health and Fitness. He had all of that. Now he's dropped almost 200lbs from a high of 380. What did he do? Took advice and learned to eat right. Found out that with the right food he wasn't hungry all the time. Here's a link.

YTF thread is confirmed awesome. He used to post some here in the Lounge.

a simple answer from a simple mind

Yeah but no side order comes with this. Restraint.

This is basically how Americans "watch my figure":

I remember seeing Jeff Garland on some talk show a while back and he was talking about being overweight. He said if you set up 3 tables, one with all of the finest beers, wines and liquor imaginable, another with every recreational drug ever conceived and the third with a 4 day old supermarket sheet cake that he would head for the cake every time. It is his one true vice.

I understand him completely. I've been doing good but have fought weight for years. I constantly monitor calories in/out and exercise daily and the older you get the less that works no matter what.

Hey, Sugar is powerfully addictive.

I just saw some study about donuts...they put glazed donut icing out for some mice. They ate some but would stop eating it after a bit. Then the put out a plain donut for the mice. Again, they would eat a little bit but but would stop once they got full.

They then gave the mice some glazed donuts. The mice would keep eating until they couldnt move. Could not get enough of the glazed donuts!

The scientis said there's something about the combination of cake/bread with sugar that results in a gluttonous binge.

I know what they're talking about!

sugar sugar
honey honey
you are my candy, girl
and I can't stop wanting you

Great link, thank you.

I love it when the mouse studies don't reflect me at all. Makes me think I have a lower chance of getting all those horrible diseases scientists seem pretty good at giving them.

Donuts in general are gross, but glazed donuts make me want to throw up. Yuck.

I don't look down on fatties, no. I'll associate with them, why not? There's no stigma on my end. I'm not one myself. Don't think it says much about a person's character. I think it's weird to look down on them.

I don't look down on them either, except when they're eating something that's junk food. I feel bad for feeling that way, but I can't help it.

Yes, it is simple. That's not to say it isn't hard for some people. But in the end the way to lose weight is to eat so that calories in < calories out.

some of you seem to be saying being fat is a weakness and a drain on society. isn't smoking worse, or at least comparable? i know people look down on smokers too, but it doesn't generate the same kind of disgust and derision

Smoking is pure trash. Most people definitely look down upon smokers. But there are differences. You aren't forced to look at a smoker's fat rolls when they wear spandex. Smokers don't take up the entire sidewalk or walk 1 mile per hour. You don't see a smoker's ass crack anytime they bend down a foot or more. Etc...

If you're so disgusted, why do you keep looking at them? Look away if it causes you such distress. No one is forcing YOU to look. I know you're getting your jollies off of feeling superior to them, but get a new hobby.

Interesting that no one has brought up the strong correlation between obesity and economic class. People who are poorer tend to be more overweight which is highly related to the fact that the foods that are cheaper are more caloric (especially in empty calories), high in preservatives, sugars, etc. And before you start throwing down 'the fact' that carrots cost the same as McDonalds, no, no they don't. They don't cost the same in terms of caloric payout as more empty calories (aka McDonalds) will make you feel fuller than a lesser number of calories from a better source (ie carrots). Also, there is a time cost that also needs to be figured in as all of the healthier foods (ie fresh fruits, vegetables, etc) require preparation to actually make a meal whereas McDonalds obviously does not. If you're a minimum wage earner and probably working a couple of jobs to make ends meet, you rarely have the money, time nor energy to eat as healthy as you know you should, especially if you have a family to support and feed.

Smokers put smoke all over the place. They walk inside after smoking as much as quickly as they can and smell so much that the whole place smells. It smells so strong that if you spend time in a smoker's house, even if they don't smoke around you, you will come out smelling.

That said, I'm not saying smokers should be despised. For most of them, it's a very strong addiction. The part that is really dumb is starting to smoke, but most people do that when they are, well, dumb kids.

Take this test . It's a safe link to harvard.edu. It's a 10 minute quiz to see if you are biased toward fat people or thin people. They have a lot of quizzes - look at the very bottom for the Fat box. See if you are being truthful with yourself or not.

I took it like 5 years ago and got "strong preference toward thin people" and just re-took it and got the same thing.

I live in Houston, Texas, quite arguably the fattest city in the world. Maybe not Samoan-per-capita-fat but a large enough population that it's ****ing impossible to "look away" from all the gargantuan sweaty fatties here.

I did that test twice. First I got moderate preference for fat people, then I got slight preference for thin people.

The first time I was going fastish, but slow enough that I got every answer right. The second I went fast fast and got many wrong.

Both times though, it was very hard for me to keep the results out of mind while I took the test.

I don't have a problem with fat people. I have a problem with people who lie to themselves and/or to others about the motivations and consequences of their decisions. Be fat. Eat what you want. But be honest about how much you eat, what you eat, and what will happen if you continue to do so.

But even then, I hesitate to make such a bald statement, because who among us has such self-awareness and security that we either don't know something about ourselves or tell ourselves little lies for comfort?

If we're only talking about varied metabolic rates, then yeah. IIRC the varied metabolic rate (assuming sedentary conditions) is at most a few hundred calories. However, while it might seem like a small rock for someone to have a base metabolic rate of only 100-200 calories less than someone else, that can easily make a HUGE difference. If you eat a couple of hundred extra calories a few days out of the week but otherwise eat at maintenance, you will slowly put on weight.

This easily defies our day to day intuitions, especially if the person doesn't actually track their caloric intake!

When we discuss genetic factors, we need to take into full account the predispositions of the individual beyond a varied metabolic rate. Other posters have touched on this, but there are other issues, such as psychological issues and problems with hunger satiation. The YTF thread you recommended is an excellent example of all of these things.

For your analogy to be appropriate, it would need to be something like

satisfying hunger=satisfying sexual attraction

You make a fairly obvious conflation when you say acting on sexual attraction is analogous to eating TOO MUCH, not simply to eating. But eating itself is essential to our health, just as acting on our sexual desires is essential to our health. If you'd said that indulging to excess in either could lead to negative consequences, I don't think there'd be any obvious disagreement, aside from maybe asking what that has to do with the discussion ITT.

DB,

If we're simply going off anecdotal evidence, sure, most of us probably know someone who SEEMS to eat like a horse and stays thin, while the other person SEEMS to eat much less but is fat/keeps gaining weight. But science has shown us that the situation is pretty much never like you describe. Base metabolic rates (assuming sedentary conditions) won't be very different, at most in the order of a few hundred calories.

But let's say we knew both people had the same level of activity. We'd still need to actually keep track of their intake. We have seen time and again that people who mentally keep track of their intake have a huge margin of error, so again, even if we knew two people had the same level of physical activity, if you're not actually tracking the caloric intake of the person who eats like a horse and comparing that intake to someone who seems to eat like a mouse (or whatever), you're probably wrong about how much more the skinny person is eating than the fat person.

What if the skinny person engages in more physical activity? I know for a fact that I eat close to 2.5x the amount of calories my wife does, but my muscle mass and weekly activity requires me to eat that much.

You bring up some excellent points. This is a really tough issue. I know how hard it is for people to manage their weight.

I have been to both ends of the spectrum, anorexic and so skinny I was close to death as well as overweight and wondering why my clothes didn't fit anymore. I don't think the problem is so simple as learning facts about nutrition and satiety, but there is an awful lot of pseudo-science mucking up most people's attempts to manage their weight, and I think the first step is to at least understand why one is overweight and what they could do about it if they wanted. It isn't easy for anyone. I hear the trainers at my gym preaching pseudo-science like "Eat small meals to keep the metabolic fires stoked throughout the day!" These trainers are supposed to be the experts. How is the layman supposed to know that they are being sold bull****?

I did bring this up, but I didn't mention the McD trap. I talked about how the trap is even worse because the quality of the cheap "healthy" food is terrible.

Anecdote. I once bought a box of cereal from 99c Only. There was no nutrition in it, according to the label with all 0s. I ate the entire box and still felt wholly unsatisfied and hungry, despite the fact that I just rammed 3500 calories down my throat. I also had a pounding headache and wanted to throw up.


I would have never thought...

One thing I will add as Busto raised pseudoscience as clouding the issue, when I hear about stupid diets like the all banana diet or the Muslim-Jew-Hindu diet, I want to punch people that come up with such things in the head. I think this whole glycemic index stuff is pseudoscience too, but I may be wrong -ot just smacks of a false magic bullet to me... it just seems if you need to weigh less, you either eat less, exercise more, or preferably both. Oh and eat enough fruit and veg.

We need the message diet isn't a short term thing, it's a lifestyle/habit thing. You give up bad eating/lifestyle habits much like when you give up smoking. Imagine if smokers felt their cure were to stop smoking for 3 months and then start again. That's as ridiculous to me.

Fruits and vegetables are generally cheap.

Last night for dinner my wife made some cauliflower, pea, potato curry thing that was very nutritious, very good and probably cost less than $1/serving.

Cheap food being more caloric is really not the problem. Eating out is a big problem and other food choices that don't have anything to do with cost are.

What do you think the nutrition and calorie count are if you go to a fancy restaurant? Every watch a cooking show? Butter, cream, sugar, salt - usually in astounding quantities.

I'm generally pretty much a bleeding heart, but that cheap cost of fast food making people fat argument is grating. It is wrong and condescending.

DB,

I think you'll like this article. The whole site in general is pretty good reading, but the nutrition section is particularly relevant to our discussion.

That article is primarily a review of the book The Diet Fix, but he touches on a number of other issues, like the LOLLLLLLL Dr. Oz recommendations, why diets fail, why exercise is not the easy solution (and alone can make the problem worse).

microbet,

I think the point about getting adequate nutrition being harder for poor people is fair, though I did surprise some peers when I pointed out how much I spend on the meals I make at home compared to the fast food meals they purchase. But we have to remember that the cost of healthy eating goes beyond the financial cost. Time, knowledge, and willpower* all have a cost, and they are in short supply for those living at or below the poverty line.

*I don't mean lol poors have no willpower, I mean that willpower is a limited resource. If you have to spend time and mental energy just surviving, there's not much willpower left to transform your eating habits, or the time to do so even if there were.