Interesting News
Jun 27th, 2005 at 11:47 am by Susie
So what are you having for lunch?
Analysis of the data showed that those who wanted to lose weight and succeeded were significantly more likely to die young than those who stayed fat.
“Healthy overweight or obese subjects who try to lose weight and succeed in doing so over a six-year period suffer from almost double the risk of dying during the next 18 years compared with subjects who do not try to lose weight and whose weight remains stable,” said Dr Sorensen.
Obese people need every bit of news, every factoid, every study they can lay their hands on and cite to justify remaining overweight. Here’s what I’d like to know about this article. Did they separate out in the study the methods used by those losing weight? Bet money those dying younger were damaged by fad/poor diets and various weight loss chemicals. Those achieving weght loss soley through a balanced, prudent, low-cal diet and vigorous, doctor supervised and sanctioned exercise did just fine. Also, I’ve known obese people to use their weght, and their attempts to lose it, as a justification for continuing to smoke. Were habits and practices other than diet and exercise factored in, such as smoking, drinking, wearing of seat belts, vocation, enviroment and family support taken into account? It’s a pity the obese are fed this crap and made to feel better about their situation. I can see the treadmills being carried to the curb and Marlboros, Jack Daniels and fried chicken being busted out right now…………
Well, Steve Duncan, that’s one way of looking at how we obese people view the world.
Another way to react to this new information is the following:
This new research simply underscores what a lot of us have known for years: They don’t know why people get fat.
They don’t know.
At all.
If they knew, they’d try to sell us fat people a cure. Until they find a nice expensive cure that they can gouge money from us with, they’ll stick with their current mix of bogus diets (see: multibillion dollar diet industry with concomitant products, programs, etc.) and firing up the average person’s hatred of The Other by ragging on Those Evil/Stupid/Lazy/Etc Fat People (see: your comment on me and my kind immediately preceding this comment). It’s an evil combination that doesn’t help anyone lose weight or get healthier … but it sure sells product.
Thanks, Steve, for helping contribute to this crap.
I am soOOOOOOO confused!
Pass the LARD.
Hey, you gonna eat that?
dveej, except for a very few obese persons with a chronic metabolic disorder everyone can and will lose weight through a combination of reduced caloric intake and increased, vigorous, regular exercise. If you have a box of rocks and remove 2 for every one you add there is no other outcome than the box will eventually become empty. In the vast majority of human bodies this analogy is apt. Why should we think the obese are less subject to the same failings of discipline and willpower as those trying to quit or start any other change in life? Why do people fail to quit smoking? Because they enjoy the habit and can’t conquer the addiction. The same goes for alcohol. For the most part obese people enjoy eating, and eating the wrong foods, and lack the discipline and willpower to exercise regularly. The obese want to turn the tables on those observing their problem and say “You’re the one with the problem if you can’t look past my body and see me for the good person I am.” Better yet they carry their defensiveness to the ultimate illogical level and proclaim they don’t have a problem to begin with. You’re not overweight because it can’t be helped. You’re overweight because it’s too much change, too inconvenient, too time consuming and just plain a pain in the ass to bother with it. Read all you want about how it’s basicallo just fine to be obese but thousands of medical studies prove a multitude of maladies lay at obesity’s door. You want to have a stroke, adult onset of diabetes, cardiac problems, joint problems and a hundred other outgrowths of excess weight have at it. I’ll risk the “dangerous” practices of a healthy diet, regualr exercise and the resulting lean, toned body that results from it.
Steve, Steve, Steve.
I don’t think it’s fine to be obese. I don’t like it at all. I have lived my whole life dieting, exercising, having surgery, joining fitness clubs. I am an expert on the current state of the art of obesity knowledge.
Healthy diet and regular exercise are not why some people are obese and some are not. The vast majority of “normal weight” people don’t have to think about this stuff. They eat whatever, and don’t get fat.
I am not advocating obesity as a lifestyle. I am advocating thinking as a lifestyle. Try it sometime, and you might realize, among other things, that no one wants to be fat, and that if “healthy diet and regular exercise” were the solution to being persecuted by intolerant ignorant people such as yourself, we obese people would not be obese by now.
Read a book, Steve. Start with that old classic “The Dieter’s Dilemma”. You might learn something.
But then you wouldn’t be able to rant and rave from on high about how superior you are to us fatties. And what fun would there be in that?
dveej, where have you read that low caloric intake combined with regular, vigorous exercise will not result in weight loss for most people? It would be an assertion scoffed at by any scientist versed in the field of human metabolism.
Dveej and Steve Duncan, you’re both right. Why would overweight people choose to be overweight in a society that looks down on obesity?
And furthermore, folks who are obese are generally speaking, suffering from Chronic Metabolic disorder. If you can’t move your body to increase your metabolism because you are obese, then your metabolism is going to continue to be too slow to break down the fat in your body. Hence, a body in motion, blah, blah, blah.
I come from a family of obesity and worked extremely hard at losing my weight. I dieted, took speed, exercised until I nearly stroked out because I was not exercising properly. It was not until I met with a weight trainer and learned about anatomy and physiology did I get the proper advice on how to build muscle and lose body fat. But this doesn’t work for everyone. Everyone has different needs and you can’t lump everyone in the same category.
Obese folks need to feel better about themselves too in order to make the necessary changes. Society needs to stop condemning people for being overweight. Our own government presented us with a pyramid of food choices in the ’80’s that until recently we discovered were the absolute wrong choices for our dietary needs. In fact, that very pyramid led us to the obesity and health problems that our country is stricken with today as well as our fast food lives.
One solution doesn’t help everyone, but if we understood our bodies better (SCIENCE) we might be able to make better choices for ourselves instead of believing the advertising we are bombarded with by major corporations.
So, in summary, blame the major corporations and government for our obesity. Just kidding.
We alll get to be responsible for our own decisions if provided with the proper facts.
Steve, weight loss is not the issue. I can easily lose weight. It’s keeping it off in the long term that is the problem. The much vaunted “diet/exercise” combination works. For the short term. But your body adjusts and rebels strongly to the new lower weight.
This is what many non-obese people don’t get: we CAN lose twenty, forty pounds (I have done this many, many times in my life)–but that doesn’t solve the problem. After we obese lose the weight, we are hungrier than before. Much, much hungrier. All the time.
(Phen-Fen helped this, but because 3% of Phen-Fen users experienced heart problems, the 97% of us who didn’t are SOL.)
Moreover, losing weight in the short-term doesn’t merely fail to solve the problem of being obese: it causes new problems. The yo-yo cycle is worse for one’s health than simply staying obese.
I don’t take any great pleasure in noting these facts. I wish they weren’t true, and I wish that I didn’t have to deal with this problem. I do have other interests in life besides food, and the whole food thing is simply an annoyance that distracts from things I should be doing.
But those who haven’t been obese don’t know what it’s like, and should not pontificate. You are ponificating, and you are pontificating from a position of utter ignorance.
I can’t tell you how many times complete strangers approach me in stores, on the street, wherever, and begin lecturing me in a kindly tone about obesity. These people are invariably thin. They think, as you seem to, that because I am obese, I either don’t know how to fix it or don’t care.
They (and you) are right in one regard: I DON’T know how to fix it.
And neither do you.
Calamity Jane, I am happy that you have lost weight. I have lost weight too. Many times.
The food pyramid thing is part of the solution to the puzzle–but it is not a cut and dry solution. For me, eating a higher ratio of protein to carbohydrates, and not eating low fat as most people recommend, seems to help curb my appetite.
But it doesn’t work the same way for everybody. And jokers like Steve, who Know It All without having been here, will say that which calories you consume don’t matter: it’s all about the total amount of calories.
For people like me, choosing carefully which carbs to consume (higher fiber, denser nutrition, fewer starches) is important in curbing my rampant appetite. And I do this stuff. But it’s not a complete solution.
They simply don’t know why these differences exist. And people enjoy moralizing about the ugly, fat failures they see around them: if they would only (insert your favorite cure here) they would be beautiful and thin and I wouldn’t have my cognitive dissonance stroked by having to look at them.
Susie, I apologize for monopolizing your comments with this off-topic topic. Had to get it off my chest.
dveej, you say you can lose weight but it all comes back no matter what you do? So, once you’ve gotten to a lower weight you consume 1500 calories a day. You exercise and burn 2000 calories. You do this long term, unfailingly, and still gain back your previously lost weight? How? Your body manufactures calories? The weight fairies add it at night? As to being hungry all the time it sounds like maybe you’re giving in to those urges and eating? I’m sure ex-smokers dream of lighting a cigarette often. Ex-drinkers ponder the joys of a cold beer. But you know what, they are “ex” whatever they’re vice. You want to be ex-obese? Live with your hunger just like ex-smokers and ex-drinkers live with their unsatisfied desires.
Wow, this is complicated. I guess one size does not fit all, and one method does not fit all sizes.
Over the last year or so, I’ve lost 30 pounds to great benefit in appearance, attitude, sex life, blood pressure, cholesterol count, digestive comfort, etc. But now I’m slowly creeping up. I hope I can reverse that and lose another 30 pounds, which is where I really need to be.
My methods were intuitive and common-sensical. I shifted from carbs to proteins and fats (but in balance), drank more water, cut out soft drinks, and exercised more. It worked.
I have great sympathy for people whose genetics and/or body type makes it hard for them to keep their waight down.
Steve, there are more things in life than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
It’s a quality of life issue, comparable to, oh I don’t know, walking around the rest of your life with a ten-inch carrot stuck up your ass. At some point you say to yourself “Why am I walking around with this carrot up my ass? To keep the weight off, right. But the carrot hurts. Should I keep walking around with the painful carrot up my ass, or should I take the motherfucker out?”
That’s a silly analogy, but really you can’t understand how devastating, all-consuming and mind-altering the feeling of hunger and starvation can be. Obese people who lose weight have a problem with our bodies: our bodies think we are starving and are working as hard as they can to correct this incorrect perception, with all the hormones and urges they can throw at us.
To continue my dumb analogy, for want of a better way to describe it to you, I have chosen to take the ten-inch carrot of absolutely eating 2000 calories daily out of my ass, because life is simply too short. I have instead replaced it with a couple of smaller carrots: trying to eat as healthily as I can while not maintaining that “starving” feeling all the time, which is not worth the effort in a logical cost/benefits analysis; and accepting that I will have to deal with well-meaning but ignorant people like yourself.
Those carrots, while annoying, are preferable.
dveej, you have just validated everything I’ve said about the obese. Your equating of a carrot in the ass with the pain and sacrifice of the steps needed to lose weight negates any assertion the obese are suffering their plight due to circumstances beyond their control. By and large they’re obese because they refuse to live with that damned carrot (i.e. exercise and strict diet). Why do some people look upon wheezing, asthmatic, coughing smokers with a combination of pity and scorn? Why do we shake our heads at the drunk at the party when he’s had one too many? Because we know they’re heaping abuse unnecessarily on their body and probably causing suffering to those that love them in the process. We feel the same or similar feelings when we gaze upon the obese.
To summarize and be done with this shit:
Steve, you are not only an ignoramus, you are a proud, arrogant ignoramus who does not read what is put in front of your face.
I did not, as you incorrectly assert, equate the chosen pain of a carrot in the ass with the pain and sacrifice of the steps needed to lose weight. I equated the chosen pain of a carrot in the ass with the pain and sacrifice of the step (there is only one) required to maintain weight loss. For me and many people like me, the daily suffering required to carry that carrot around (I did, for two longgg years) is not worth the benefits. The cure was worse than the disease.
That is completely different, and you in your righteous crusader zeal missed it. And it is central to the point.
In closing (and I will not post any more here on this, because I’m obviously preaching to the willfully obtuse), you don’t get it, and you should not be telling anyone how to live their lives.
If I were a meaner person, I would wish on you either that you would have this problem yourself, or even worse, that you would have someone you love get this problem. But I don’t, because I am not that mean. I have tried to show you that your original comment was based on ignorance and lack of empathy, and have tried to explain why what the very obese have to go through to maintain weight loss is so much harder than simply losing the weight to begin with. You don’t want to hear it, because in your mind, you already know.
Be more careful in your listening to others. It will make you enjoy life better. You are not always right. In this instance, for example, you have decided that I am another fat slob in denial who has no willpower, and that is incorrect. But you persist in your wrong world view, so whatever. I have simply chosen the lesser of two painful alternatives. It is the responsible choice, and because you haven’t been where I am, you cannot understand it, and these attempts of mine to explain it are falling on deaf ears.
I feel a responsibility to other obese people who don’t have the means to explain this stuff — especially those who are less able to write. We are one of the minorities it is OK to discriminate against, and people like you are not content with accepting that maybe, just maybe, you who do the discriminating are the ones who are wrong. Instead you fall back on your refusal to think, which in my experience is the true hallmark of those who describe themselves as “conservative”. In your world, people are Us and The Bad Other. Since I now know which camp I fall into, I won’t waste any more of our time trying to show you your errors.