I went to taco bell once many years ago (literally once, yuch!). They did unlimited gulps.

Diet coke ftw imo. May kill me in the end but I can't drink real ale all the time.

I'd say most. The food science you mentioned gets you hooked, and then the ease and convenience leads to a habit that your brain is just not interested in breaking.

I am a giant. At the heaviest, I carried 415 lbs on a 6'7" frame. Think Andre the Giant body type as opposed to Peter Griffin. Bit of man boob and plenty of flab, but no massive gut or spillage over the sides. Definitely a body by Frito-Lay.

I did the world's worst version of a keto diet (only thing green was broccoli) and dropped to 225, but at that point I looked like a cancer patient and was too thin per friends and family. Around 245 was the sweet spot and I stayed there for a while but fell off the wagon and have gone up steadily over the past year and a half. I am back at the upper limit of size 40 pants right now and feeling extremely shitty about it.

I can cook and always garner compliments when hosting, but it's so much easier to make excuses, kick the can down the road to tomorrow and toss an extra burger on the grill when there's nobody looking.

Portion size is a major killer and Cuepee is spot on about that. I have never been a drinker of alcohol and whenever it isn't water, it's diet coke. So I'm not a victim of the 72 ounce serving of sugar water or drinking calories in general, but you can bet that I'll polish off an entire pizza if given the opportunity or help myself to a 4th muffin if they're just sitting there.

So when I see people talk about how poor people are fat because it's cheaper to eat that way, I call bullshit. It's not cheaper, but it's definitely much easier, and if your life is filled with stress already then why add an extra 30 minutes of food prep and dishwashing to the list? Just go get some KFC or buy that 7000 calorie take-n-bake pizza.

What made me take that first step to changing the first time was the day that I went to McDonalds to get my morning 2x Sausage Egg and Cheese McGriddles and I pulled around, paid at the window, and at the pickup window the manager who was just trying to be nice said, "See you tomorrow!"

That was like 4 or 5 years ago now and I haven't been back. Pure shame got the ball rolling. That shame is coming back now that I'm keenly aware of my pants not fitting right. I have an entire room of my house filled with thousands of dollars in weight equipment currently collecting dust. Best of intentions as I'm sure most people have, but it's way easier to start up another round of Dota2 than change into workout clothes.

Obesity is a people problem, and not an easy one to solve.

Obesity is normal only in rich nations. And it's more normal in some of those than in others.

Exactly the same statement is true for alcoholism

Whether people feel bad or not is their problem. People need to accept the consequences of their lifestyle choices and their unsought physical impairments. But a world where fat people occupy the seats next to them is no different than a world where people smoke on the bus. Society does not have to facilitate or accommodate what they themselves have to accommodate.

Being fat is not like being black or gay.

All of this is irrelevant towards whether it is normal. Sitting on a pedestal and lording shame over people doesn't solve anything, either.

While scarcity of resources or extreme poverty certainly makes obesity rare for obvious reasons, obesity is far from being problematic or normal only in countries we would think of as "wealthy". Nor is it a problem in all wealthy problem, so on a population level the problem is rooted in something more than just wealth or consumerism.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...bese-countries

Even that dynamic is now changing.

Fast Food companies and big American producers are finding a way to deliver their worst products into countries and neighbourhoods that prior were not economical viable targets and the price they are extracting on the poor, who often do live in food deserts, is very high.

See my example upthread of the Turkey Butt exports and the damage it is doing and how the Food Lobby literally has subverted the WTO to smash through country sovereignty and force them to take the garbage, throw away product.

The bolded is big part of the problem and something that I think society should discuss but is generally too toxic to discuss.

Society has largely adopted a stance that it is not only 'our problem' but it is so important for us to not create even the possibility of offense, purposefully or accidentally (and not just on this matter), especially if a group is deemed 'vulnerable'.

Where i think there is more room to debate tame's comments are on the following:

- "Obesity is normal" - sure it is normal as in a percent of society will always deal with it but it does not have to be a norm, nor normalized.

- "It's also true that weight loss have very low success which has nothing to do with "willpower" or "perseverance"" - that is not an absolute and a statement that 'can' be debated. It was not a truism of Western society for the vast majority of time and is only a relative recent phenomena in the West. Go to Ukraine or Japan and you will see the opposite. Weight loss has a very high success rate and it seems to have everything to do willpower and perseverance. And societal pressure and expectations ARE arguably the most significant component in that success.

Some may argue other components rank higher, especially amongst segments of the poorer population where very few options exist, and fair enough, but even those arguments are tougher to make, in my view as we can look at poorer nations but where that societal pressure still exists and see better outcomes.

To the above, and I do not know how to say this artfully, is where we tread into the area i refer to as 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

Yes Japan, Ukraine, etc have what is called societal pressure. Societal pressure can feel 'mean' when a person fails to live up to it (educational outcomes, health outcomes, etc) and as such the US (West), in almost every area tries to remove that pressure and make it taboo or even demonize it.

End result is it contributes (massively imo) to an exploding epidemic of a problem. So in that 'road to hell' equation 'are the ~4% of Japanese who are considered obese (the ones who "fail") potentially dealing with "depression", etc a sad outcome. Yes. It is sad they suffer and unfortunate if societal pressure has a pile on feeling for them. I say that sincerely not dismissively.

Have we in the West chosen a better, nicer path in attempting to remove that outcome, when it then leads to an exponential increase in obesity (imo)? No. Some might argue 'sure the US (West) is trending towards 50% obesity and will soar thru that predictably and soon but we can mitigate how they feel about it and make them feel more positive, by removing expectations. Hiding away positive (ie 'fit') imagery, etc.

But that to me is where the folly comes to fruition. That 50%+ of obese people are NOT happier even if we remove societal expectations than the 4% in Japan, in this regard.

This is a complex issue because you cannot isolate for this one component of peoples satisfaction as a component of their overall well being and mental health but I am quite sure if you polled people in the US and Japan and asked 'do you feel your body image contributes positivity or negatively to your overall mental well being', you would see a vastly better response in Japan.

Some, again, might argue 'the removal of societal pressure in the West can fix that', but I disagree. The societal pressure is the main determinant, imo, of better outcomes and better outcomes are what lead to better mental well being. Trying to remove societal pressure (make them feel better and more accepting of themselves regardless of their state) results in more 'failures' and thus more people depressed, etc.

Thus the very medicine you are trying to deliver to deal with challenge is exasperating the issue and the cure is working on the prevention and trying to tailor that in the most educational and effective way.

It is certainly common, but I don't think being obese is the normal human condition. The human body was not designed to be in that state. If all your friends decided to jump off a cliff that doesn't mean it's normal for you to do it too.

Of course I agree lording shame over people doesn't solve anything (although I enjoy joking about it). There are a lot of things that brought us to this place: the food industrial complex, engineering food to be addictive, horrible diet advice from the government such as the food pyramid and suggesting fat is bad is sugar is basically ok, focusing on calories, etc, etc. A lot of people find themselves in an environment where it's difficult not to become obese.

@cuppee

You keep talkiing about 'nicer' but that's possibly confusing you. You may want the societal pressure, you may argue for it, hell you may even be right BUT we are going to tell you to **** off and not everyone is going to be so nice about it.

The removal of societal pressure is not a fix. You may just have to cope with the reality that science is your only real hope for any fix and that's some way off at best.

Ther's another possibility that environmental considerations may overwhelm other considerations for a short period. I'm open to that but people better stop having kids first if they want to stop me having dinner to save the planet.

Totally agree apart from the silly anology with smoking - you're not going to get cancer from passive fatness

But we are part of society as much as you. We're obviosuly goign to try to accomodate ourselves and will probably tolerate you.

and you better watch that argument in america because if you're going to have some sort of societal battle over who should be tolerated then: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2020...5%20to%2029.9.

I've only been skimming this thread, but this right here seems to be key. Is there any actual evidence that this body positivity stuff is worsening rates of obesity? I feel that I obesity has been increasing despite the heavy advertising of the thin ideal.

I do have a textbook that might address this and link to some research, and hopefully I can look at it soon.

That's not true, you can absolutely increase your chance of cancer with an unhealthy lifestyle.

I am arguing that society needs to get over the '**** off'.

Accept in every argument that NEEDS to be made like this a small percent of people will say that, and that is ok, to be expected and to be dealt with in other ways.

It is, in most cases a tactic. A tactic to try and silence needed debate and discussion before it begins. We had the same issue in the 'trans in sport' debate. The very discussion of competing ideas is correlated to 'mean' and other loaded words reflexively to make the topic toxic to discuss and that is by design.

Society has a role to not allow that, imo, as the attempt to avoid the '**** off' to placate a tiny number ends up in vast damage and poorer outcomes for the masses.

The needs of the few do not outweigh the needs of the many.

I posted this upthread and stand by my comments that if this is realized it represents an over whelming failure by SOCIETY to properly engage and mitigate this issue.


Regardless of what any individual may say or how comfortable or not carrying they are about the above (which is their right) society overall should be terrified by this trend.

I don't know if it is possible to disentangle all the factors to quantify a sole input in the way you ask here.

If you find data specific to this I would love to see it.

No it's the standard response to being told by someone else - particualrly soemone who has no special claim to knowledge - that they know best.

The point I was making nthough is that you may be being confused by your idea that this is somethign to do with people being nice. It's not.

It is not a tactic. It's the enitirely natural and normal repsonse to the patronising attitude.

But you are the few and we outweight you. You're going to have to win the real battle first and that's the sort of stuff on the list I gave that you agreed with so strongly. Once the battle is won the societal pressure can help mop up the stragglers.

Doubt it but even so that in no way implies that we can fix it in the way you advocate.


You talk like society is external from all the people in it. We're going to have to change a lot at an individual level before we can hope to get anywhere with societal pressure. I again suggest the list we agreed on.

Society does know best in this regard when talking about general societal results. I am clear that does not apply to individual situations which I think you are conflating.

See the charts I posted above and the trend. Society DOES need to recognize the threat and respond to it.

But we can agree to disagree over that.

Oh yes it is certainly a tactic, not for all but certainly a significant portion and not just on this topic but all topics of 'political correct areas'. Silencing the debate and polarizing certain arguments as ones only 'bad' people say works well to just keep others silent.

Doubt what?


Societal approaches can and should differ from individualistic ones despite the fact society is a collection of the individuals.

It is fine to say a society has failed its citizens if the overall obesity rate exceeds 80% (X%) of citizens. Similarly if the overall education rate was below 10% (x%) of the citizens.

but being critical of any individual person with regards to those parameters would not be proper without considering a large degree of personal context.

The problem is that you can't argue just from need (even assuming you're correct about the need).

It's like the joke argument.

Something must be done
this is something
we must do it

Dount the problem arise because of anything to do with societal presure. it may have done but I doubt it.

Sure

You can say it but that doesn't imply you can fix it with social pressure

Every time you imply people are wrong, that you know better etc then you are criticising them. It's that that people will commonly repond to with '**** off'. You might argue that if you make it general enough then it doesn't criticse the individual but it does - tons of them.

i don't think i have ever addressed it to individuals (people) even by mistake, but perhaps i have not been explicitly clear i am referring to the 'collective' society, in my comments.

And from a societal vantage point we do 'know better' at least when it comes to what is a superior result versus a worse one, with regards to outcomes even if we disagree over tactics.

We know better can be achieved but that doens't imply people are wrong given the current options.

I think this is a recurring confusion between us. I'd rather be thin and physically fitter but that doesn't imply I'm makign a mistake by being fat because I can't have everything I want. I'm far more analytical and wierd than most but it's essentially the same thing for most people as ~no-one has the goal of being fat.

Where you're not criticising peopel as making msitakes then I offer no '**** off' response. We agree on a lot. Can't reconcile the bit where you say people need to lose weight as if it's some fact but maybe there's more misunderstanding.