This Obesity Thing

FFS it’s not bloody rocket science.

CV Exercise – gently at first, ramping up.
Do resistance exercise – more muscle mass, the higher your metabolism.
Eat Low-GI carbs, when eating carbs.
Eat Healthy Fats.
Take measurements, waist, hips, thighs, chest etc.
Ignore the bloody scales apart from a monthly weigh in.
Write everything down. Exercise, what you eat, drink, everything.

I’m not even arguing that eat less move more is a bad principle – what I’m arguing is that it’s bad when shouted repeatedly by people who don’t find it difficult to manage their weight and judgementally assume anyone that does is pathetic.

^this^

Also, remember we were initially talking about effective public policy. Shouting “put down the burger and go for a run, fatty” doesn’t really work as a way of effecting change at a population level. Enabling people to be active as part of their everyday lives does.

as a former 23 stone person, you do not need to eat less and move more.
you just need to eat right, and do a bit of exercise.

What about all the 15-20 stone people who have tried to lose weight through eating less and moving more, but failed? Obviously, if you only count the ones for whom it’s worked, it works. Once you include those that it’s not worked for, it ceases to work.

it ceases to work for some
i would guess they stay fat?

What about all the 15-20 stone people who have tried to lose weight through eating less and moving more, but failed? Obviously, if you only count the ones for whom it’s worked, it works. Once you include those that it’s not worked for, it ceases to work.

Genuine question from an interested party – is it possible to eat less and exercise more and NOT lose weight? Because that’s depressing to contemplate. 🙁

Check the details mike?

How many times do you see folk coming out of a gym with a latte in their hands or drinking unnecessary sports (sugar) drinks????

Exactly. The reward effect: “I did exercise so I deserve a cake”. So, telling them to exercise more hasn’t helped; all they’ve done is read a magazine while on a stepper machine which has then made them feel they deserve a cake.

So, telling them to eat less and move more hasn’t worked.

What if they’d walked to school/work every day for their whole lives instead? And how can we make that happen?

Genuine question from an interested party – is it possible to eat less and exercise more and NOT lose weight? Because that’s depressing to contemplate.

It’s possible to try to eat less and move more, but not succeed.

Also, you can not eat enough less, and move enough more.

There are plenty of FREE apps and websites that allow you to assess what you put into your mouth and take responsibility for your choices. It’s frightening at first when the hidden sugar and calories are shown. And it’s hard work but at the end of the day, it comes down largely to personal choices.

In fact pathetic in its true sense is probably correct…the difficulty in making such choices is indeed deserving of pathos.

For various external reasons, I made bad choices at the end of last year. This year, I am reversing them. Weight on, weight off.

(Heaven forbid), if any of us fell off our bike and the Docs said we’d probably never ride again but they wouldn’t know for upto a year etc. I wonder how many of us would eat too much and drink too much alcohol feeling pissed off and depressed?

Especially if you couldn’t exercise like you used to?

Exactly. The reward effect: “I did exercise so I deserve a cake”. So, telling them to exercise more hasn’t helped; all they’ve done is read a magazine while on a stepper machine which has then made them feel they deserve a cake.

It’s the same thing. You can lead a horse to water but….each person has to make the correct choices. You do not deserve a cake. Have it if you want, but then you are simply kidding yourself. That doesn’t negate the original message.

There are plenty of FREE apps and websites that allow you to assess what you put into your mouth and take responsibility for your choices. It’s frightening at first when the hidden sugar and calories are shown. And it’s hard work but at the end of the day, it comes down largely to personal choices.

They must have been what my skinny, truck-driving, fry-up eating, no exercise granddad used to stay in shape.

It’s the same thing. You can lead a horse to water but….each person has to make the correct choices. You do not deserve a cake. Have it if you want, but then you are simply kidding yourself. That doesn’t negate the original message.

So, we get rid of 40 million obese people by waiting for them to make the right, hard choices? Or, do we make changes to society that make the choices easy?

We could have waited for people to realise that smoking was bad, but we didn’t. We changed the rules.

It’s possible to try to eat less and move more, but not succeed.

Also, you can not eat enough less, and move enough more.
Aaa, fair enough – I think I see the crux upon which the argument hangs. Or turns. Or whatever things do on cruxes. 🙂

Does it all come down to being honest with yourself, then? The example I’ve had in my head all along is smoking, being an ex-smoker – how I gave that up was a simple little mantra, all I had to do to give up smoking was to never smoke again; how simple is that? It’s binary in its simplicity. But I was discussing this very issue with Mrs Pondo last night, and she said, physical and psychological addiction notwithstanding, it’s easier to give up smoking because w=once you give up, that’s it – you don’t have another one. But if you’re on a diet, you still have to eat…

Has anyone else tried the Butterfield diet plan?

My Week on the Butterfield Diet Plan

There are plenty of FREE apps and websites that allow you to assess what you put into your mouth and take responsibility for your choices. It’s frightening at first when the hidden sugar and calories are shown. And it’s hard work but at the end of the day, it comes down largely to personal choices.

Yes and it just so happens that large percentages of people in developed countries have all started making similar personal choices at around the same time.

So, we get rid of 40 million obese people by waiting for them to make the right, hard choices? Or, do we make changes to society that make the choices easy?

We could have waited for people to realise that smoking was bad, but we didn’t. We changed the rules.

Exactly.

It’s an extraordinary conversation, and one made all the more so when we could all take a plane ride to places where people don’t have enough to eat and are not overweight.

The people for whom ELMM doesn’t work are, for the most part, still eating too much and not doing enough.

Yes it’s more complex, but if people can’t manage the simple stuff, how will they cope with the rest?

…but eventually it will have to give in to the inevitable and let go of them, right?
From where will it let go? What happens when they eat again?

You can drop fat at a reasonable sustainable rate without your body going into “starvation mode”. What that rate is depends on the person.
But losing a couple of pounds a week (circa 7000 calories) is achievable if the person makes changes to both the In and Out sides of the equation.

However, people need to change lifestyles not just “diet”.

If you crash diet and then go back on the pies/sweets/ale you WILL gain all the fat back and more besides.

Smoking’s a good analogy. How much easier is it to give up smoking now that smoking is difficult to do: fewer shops selling them, can’t smoke in pubs, more expensive, social pressure to not smoke, etc?

Having spent most if my professional life in the second/third worlds, I would respectfully dispute that notion. In relative terms (and as folk like gee etc have noted above in absolute terms) we have pretty much everything that we need (and don’t need) and in varieties that are mind boggling. We then have to make the right choices but rarely do.

I think this is a problem, that we have too much choice around us, too much bombardment. For some people, it’s baffling, and stressful. Conflicting advice everywhere, the diet industry is full of snake oil solutions peddled in a very seductive way, and because we are a quick-fix society, we are indeed seduced by them.

Counter that with the advertising for junk food, alcohol, all-inclusive holidays, and you have a recipe for brain scramble. Which makes it harder for people to make the “right choices”. You can have an advert for Alli immediately followed by an advert for Maccy D’s. Crazy. What kind of message is that, take a fat metabolising pill and eat some burgers?

As we export our lifestyle and products to the second and third worlds, they, too, are starting to have obesity problems. Look at China.

We have everything we want, but not necessarily everything we need in our society. Overeating, like many other addictions, is often related to poor mental health, and I would argue that in many cases that poor mental health is directly correlated to lifestyle – lack of connection to other people, stressful jobs, our high inflation of cost of living in relation to wages, and our total fetishization of the individual and monetary gain above the community.

Of course, I’m not holding the third world up as an ideal, crushing poverty, war and famine is hardly the solution, (although admittedly, it probably would make us thinner, if a lot more miserable). But the solutions don’t lie in throwing more choices at people, and peddling more products to try and compensate for our unhealthy lifestyles, whilst simultaneously trying to sell us happiness and friendship in a nice, sugary, nutritionless Coke can, and then expecting the individual to negotiate this bewildering nightmare of conflicting messages and take on the burden of making the right choice.

i am with you on changing the rules for sure. But that still requires the correct choices. On the one hand the choice is desperately easy – what is more important than health? At the same, time it is (in practice) also very hard but our choices over the past two generations (and despite what is available to us in the first world) have made that even harder. Blame others for sure, but largely that comes down to individual responsibility and choices we all make.

largely that comes down to individual responsibility and choices we all make.

No man is an island.

Smoking’s a good analogy. How much easier is it to give up smoking now that smoking is difficult to do: fewer shops selling them, can’t smoke in pubs, more expensive, social pressure to not smoke, etc.

I had three main drivers –
1 – I wanted to give up
2 – Just got together with the now Mrs Pondo and, while she never ever said a word about me smoking, I thought it would be a responsible thing to do and more pleasant for her to be around me
3 – All the legislation restricting where you could smoke was just a few months away.
I’d still say that number one was most important for me, but I think number three definitely helped.

Littlemisspanda – last night I went to the cinema. Between my car and my seat, there was a Morrisons (where we bought water and (ouch) some minstrels (bad choice) 😉 ) and then a series of resturants – all you can eat Asian, Pizza, Frankies, Nandos etc. Then the coffee bars and worst of all the confectionary stand in the cinema itself.

We made choices all along. That’s life. On the face of it the choices seem hard, but on reflection not at all. I made better but still imperfect choices. The minstrels were a bad choice. But there was no one else to blame. I could easily have walked past them as I did with the buy 2 get one free cinammon rolls at the entrance to Morrissons. Equally, I could have replaced the choc with a more healthy choice. But I/we didnt.

No man is an island.

some are big enough……… 😉

Genuine question from an interested party – is it possible to eat less and exercise more and NOT lose weight?

Yes. As was mentioned earlier, there are feedback loops run by hormones that result in your body wanting to hang into its fat stores. Your body may be more or less sensitive to those hormones, to produce more or less.

So we all have different tendencies towards lipostasis (I just made that one up 🙂 ). That is,some find they don’t gain weight easily, but they also don’t lose it easily. Miketually is an example, and I am to a fair degree.

If I try and restrict my calorie intake, my riding slows down. Or rather, it takes me a lot longer to recover so I am always tired. And I don’t lose weight. I lose more weight if I stop exercising altogether.

It may be that riding without enough calories causes my body to become more efficient and use less energy to ride, but I don’t know. What suffers is my top-end power, so overall on a ride I probably do expend fewer calories.

I think careful carb intake management coupled with lots of low intensity riding is my best bet, but that takes more time than I can spare currently.

some are big enough………

Indeed. At my current weight, I have my own moon.

THM – why are you so keen on emphasising personal responsibility yet seem to feel that businesses shouldn’t have to exercise any responsibility?

Given we are aware of the massive societal harm caused by obesity shouldn’t those promoting unhealthy foods (especially to kids) be seen in the same light as crack dealers?

Make the time mol. What is more important? Replace posting on STW with preparing the food you have identified. Job done.

So you do tell depressed people to cheer up MrSmith – not a massive surprise.

that is obviously not the case, lies and presumption Glum – not a massive surprise.

I am not. They complement each other. But the latter cannot compensate/replace the former.

FWIW, on the ‘evil’ stakes, 😉 I would put the food industry plus the lying advertising industry ahead of banking and estate agency!!!

THM – why are you so keen on emphasising personal responsibility yet seem to feel that businesses shouldn’t have to exercise any responsibility?

A company’s responsibility is to it’s shareholders.

thm – I don’t think individuals should abdicate responsibility at all. I am saying that the better choices are harder with all the noise around us. You are evidently a bright individual who is capable of drowning it out and making your own decisions. Other people might not be, so much.

Jamie earlier.

A company’s responsibility is to it’s shareholders.

Oh well, that’s alright then.

I agree about the noise and wish I could drown it out completely. I could kill something other than my banana with my coffee (oops) right now!!! But with two bike races and a half mara in the nest 8 weeks, I have compensating noises as well!!! The devil and the angel on each shoulder !!

Pondo.

You asked if anyone had not achieved weight loss with the ELMM.

I was eating a strict 1000 calories a day, by doctors orders to “qualify” for treatment for a back condition. I’d lost 12kg and had been hovering at 102kg for 2 months. Despite riding 120 miles a week and swimming 4 times a week, each time doing 1500 metres. The weight loss only kicked off again when I increased to 1500 calories.

The doctor wanted me to be less than 90kg to be in the correct BMI band to warrant the surgery. I did manage to get low enough, but only thanks to dysentery. Managed to get down to 87kg. Although I was hospitalised to get my weight back up to a healthy level.

A company that only satisfies its shareholders will not survive. That is a fallacy.

It’s incredible how difficult something as simple as eating has become. It’s a basic mechanism that we need to undertake to survive, yet it almost does more harm than good for alot of people it seems.

I have suffered with depression, anxiety, bulimia, anorexia, BED and other issues for a number of years. It controls my life (what I have of one anyway). I struggle to work, socialize, exercise, look after myself. I struggle to eat when I know I need to lose weight, but the only thing that gives me any comfort/relief from feeling so low is eating lots. It’s a vicious cycle, I often hope I never wake up in the morning.

I imagine there’s a large number of people with some similar issues who probably all do wish they could just eat less and move more.

mate, if food makes you feel like that, you need to speak to someone.

A company that only satisfies its shareholders will not survive. That is a fallacy.

Are you suggesting Cadburys don’t satisfy their customers?