The World Is Getting Fatter and No One Knows How to Stop It
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
But we do know how to stop it. You just have to eat a little less. A modest, sustainable change in your diet is all that is needed to make dramatic changes over a 6-12 month timescale.
Record what you eat to establish an honest food baseline, and reduce from there. Stop eating all food you don't enjoy, and stop eating when you aren't hungry.
I put off losing weight for the last decade because of the constant drumbeat of news, blogs, and anecdotal moaning I heard from everyone about how impossible it is to lose weight. But after monitoring my food as described above for 6 months, I am down 20% from my starting weight. Success feels inevitable now, because the changes I have made are small and sustainable for me; for example, I still eat candy, but fun size instead of king size. My main regret is not starting sooner. I lost my 20s to obesity because crash diets failed me and I listened when people said it wasn't possible.
reddit.com/r/loseit has been an amazing support community for me throughout this process. I'd encourage y'all to check it out if you want to make a change.
The fact that willpower/compliance is the core problem is also sufficiently well-known that I read this kind of assessment and think "and world peace too: we just have to get along with each other".
Unlike world peace, this is also an individual problem with an individual solution. If I renounce gluttony I can avoid obesity. If I renounce violence that makes me more vulnerable to murderous thugs.
Wait, how does having fewer resources make it harder to consume fewer resources?
I find it easier to not eat ice cream if I don't have any ice cream.
Are you KenM trolling us?
Hint: it's not hard.
I lost 90 lbs over about six months five years go, and haven't put it back on - and eating less is easy - saved a small fortune, too.
If anything it's harder putting on and maintaining excess weight - but the process of getting obese is more immediately gratifying than applying self-control and seeing the long term gains.
The first step to winning the battle is gaining some awareness. Barring any pre-existing condition (especially diabetes), someone who wants to lose weight should simply start eating less, and slowly so they can gradually get used to it. Food is so abundant, it's usually not lack of food that makes people feel hungry, but lack of feeding the food addiction, especially addiction to added sugars. People should try fasting every once in a while just to see they can do it and they won't suffer ill effects from feeling hungry for ~16 hours.
The biggest obstacle is convincing yourself you can do it.
I doubt that. Most people do not have a good enough understanding of what will help them lose weight easily. In fact the statement "increased consumption and decreased physical activity is the direct cause" illustrates my point, in that decreased physical activity has little to do with weight gain.
I suspect the vox populi have the same beliefs when it comes to weight loss that I did until a few years ago. That is, to lose weight one must eat lots of veggies, cut fat, cut junk food, etc. and exercise a lot. While doing that specific thing will certainly lead to the intended result, it is but one of many ways to achieve the goal of weight loss. More importantly it masks the mechanics of weight loss, which are simple to understand and from which a plethora of lifestyle changes can be derived that are nearly effortless and malleable enough to fit into anyone's lives.
The truth is simple. People gain weight when they consume more calories than they expend. Carbs, fat, sugar, veggies, exercise, etc. don't magically bend the equation. It's just calories. From that simple fact everything else can be derived. My advice to anyone is to grab a calorie tracking app, and use it for two weeks. Set a calorie budget for yourself (good apps will ask questions and do this for you), and then stay within that budget. Your life will change forever.
You know how humans intuitively believe that a bowling ball falls faster than a pebble? Well our intuitions about food are just as bad. You'll quickly learn that breads are awful, meat is amazing, and exercise is useless (for losing weight). Most of that is counter intuitive. I bet most people will think a chicken sandwich is healthy, and fat, juicy steak is bad. But the opposite is true (in the context of losing weight). The chicken sandwich comes on bread, which is calorie dense and will quickly blow your calorie budget without filling you up. The steak, on the other hand, can be surprisingly low calorie and will fill you up for a long time (fats are satiating). And yes, again, exercise is useless. People will jump to the exercise part of the app, plug in their 20 minutes of treadmill, and see that through all their sweat and tears ... they've earned half a cookie worth of calories. Not worth it. That doesn't jive with what your average joe off the street believes about weight loss.
After the two weeks? Ditch the app if you want. Those two weeks will change your lifestyle, and you'll be able to guessimate calories without it to maintain weight. Want to keep losing weight? Keep using it; you'll have learned that calorie apps aren't scary, or hard. You'll go to the store, check the nutrition facts, and you'll realize you now have a special new power. The power to understand what those numbers mean and how they'll impact your life. It becomes second nature and doesn't require any extra brain power. Seriously, it's easy.
This stuff is not taught in schools, nor by most parents, nor by most of vocal society. We get the tired, old rhetoric about vegetables and exercise. For goodness' sake, we were taught the food pyramid when I was growing up! What a load of bollocks that was. I get funny looks by almost everyone when I say things like "Bacon is good for you!" and "Fat is healthy for you!" They look at me like what I said was a joke. I think that's telling about what "everyone here knows".
P.S. This comment is all within the context of losing weight. Eating healthy is a different matter, one which is much more complex, far less understood, and far more open to debate. In the grand scheme of things, if you're overweight, that's going to kill you before "Ah, well, looks like you didn't eat enough of this unheardof berry that we just discovered last week in the Caribbean forests". So take care of weight first, then in roughly this order: stop eating sugar. No really, stop eating sugar. Fat is good for you (except trans, that's terrible. Sat/unsat is whatever; probably doesn't matter and we don't know one way or the other). Yes, seriously, fat is good for you. Exercise. No, cardio is not for everyone, so do weight training if that makes you happier. Or do cardio if that makes you happier. Whatever gets you into the gym. No, it doesn't matter how many reps/sets you do; just work hard. Multi vitamins. Fish (or fish oil) ... maybe. Your heart will thank you. Fiber. Seriously, fiber. Mr. colon needs love too. Oh, and get some sun, but not more than 20 minutes without sunblock. Careful balance between vitamin D and skin cancer... But no, really, the sun is scary. Some day we will master the art of genetic manipulation and put racism behind us so we can make everyone some nice shade of brown. Until that day, if you were unfortunate enough to be born without natural melanin in your skin (aka white), stay the hell away from the giant freaking nuclear reactor core in the sky. Future you will thank you for not having to get gapping, cancerous holes cut out of your face and arms because you wanted to be tan for a summer 40 years ago. Did all that? Okay, go chase the latest fad diet if that makes you happy. No, seriously, happiness priceless. Find it wherever you can.
Having a diet abundant in veggies allows you to eat as much as you want any time you want. The best diet for those who like to eat a lot and often.
Given the evidence it is obviously true that majority of people have no emotional maturity to control themselves. They've been given, through tax incentives of meat and dairy, an opportunity to fill themselves with large amounts of cheap meat, and it is easy to overdose with meat.
Try eating carrots, kale, lettuce, eggplants, legumes, beans, buckwheat, corn like a madman (which is what obviously the majority is doing with meat) and see if you get fat.
People think meat has a place in every meal. It's obviously not a good choice.
PS: I need to lose 20 lbs myself
On the other side, high caloric density diets (that is, high fat, adequate protein, very low carb diets like the keto diet (r/keto is alright for basic info and motivation)) work pretty well too. I can consume a lot of calories via sugar, and even via complex carbs, but it's much harder for me to consume the same amount if most of those calories are coming from fat. I don't have a strong will when it comes to reducing the amount I eat of something delicious, so I make up for it by restricting what I have available and ready to eat.
Not only are fats satiating, but they satiate quickly and for a long time. When they hit your intestines they immediately signal your body that it is full. This is because fats are calorie dense and are the longest burning category of calorie, so the body benefited from an early warning system to keep its satiation estimate accurate. And, to be honest, while fat itself is obviously the most calorie dense (what was it, like 6 or 8 per g, compared to 4 for protein and sugar?), fatty foods often are not dense in terms of calorie/service. Bacon, for example, while often perceived as a fatty, terrible food, is really low on the calorie/serving metric and the fats boost its satiation metric very high.
There are also some subtleties to satiation/calorie. There's the biological satiation; your body telling your brain that you've consumed enough calories. And then there's mental satiation; your mind being happy with what you just ate. And biological satiation is sometimes inaccurate to the extent that it's really a dual purposed signal. It signals "you're full", but it's interpreted as both "I'm full" and "I have enough calories". Fat is ideal in that it triggers "I'm full" while also providing the calories to back it up. Vegetables will fill you up, but they don't have any energy to back them up, so they can be problematic. They work best as a way to tune the density of a meal. And, of course, they provide much needed fiber, vitamins, and minerals, but I was focusing mostly on the weight-gain aspect of foods.
Just a little food for thought to perhaps enhance the way you quantify various diets.
Not less, but smarter, less sugar, more vegetables and meat, but not highly processed meat, more water, less water-sugar-juice.
>Stop eating all food you don't enjoy, and stop eating when you aren't hungry.
I enjoy donuts, but I don't enjoy cauliflowers, yet I don't eat donuts.
More people are finding that the only work they can find is a desk job working long hours with a long commute and many expenses to worry about.
Throw in the US' massive subsidies for meat, soy, sugars, a cultural love of fried food (just go to any restaurant or convenience store)- and voila, you have a cheap vice for those overworked, unfit people to indulge in.
The solution would be for work to be less hours (more time to exercise), from home (no commute = live somewhere more active and financially sustainable), and for all food sources to be unsubsidized, so that people can decide that $2 for a pound of frozen veggies and some sauce is a great deal compared to the $3 box of oreos/goldfish
I've been collecting links about this stuff here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/hpz/open_thread_june_16...
I'm far from certain that any of it is correct, or have any idea what the real cause is. But I find it really interesting, and it makes me kind of angry when people make judgmental comments about fat people or the cause of obesity.
I mean even if it is environmental, it doesn't mean it's easy to control. Most people who try to diet fail. There's no such thing as free will, and even if a highly restricted diet would work in theory, we all have animal brains that can be overwhelmed by powerful desires to fulfill basic needs like eating. Some people can't stop eating any more than you can hold your breath for 3 minutes. Even if there is nothing physically preventing you from doing so.
One of the articles in the link I posted was about obese people in the 1950's held in a hospital on a carefully controlled diet. It worked, but the patients just obsessed about food and acted like starving people, despite being a normal weight. As soon as they were allowed to leave the hospital, they quickly returned to their normal weights.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/weight_stability.htm...
Many of the "complicated" phenomena are simply people not doing the math and not understanding what the simple model actually predicts.
>Before the diet began, the fat subjects’ metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.
...
And even if it was as simple as Calories in Calories out, it doesn't explain why some people want to eat more food than others:
>The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.
I'm also not disputing that rapid weight loss is possible. But then why don't most people that try radical diets experience it? Yet those who gained weight unnaturally seem to lose the weight effortlessly in months.
>The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.
Obviously Harris-Benedict - which is not a theory of the mind - will not explain why I'm obsessed with food while others don't care.
Harris-Benedict does explain "prisoners that intentionally overeat quickly return to their original weight" and "As soon as they [people on restricted diets in lab conditions] were allowed to leave the hospital, they quickly returned to their normal weights."
These are exactly predictions of Harris-Benedict (with metabolism held constant).
Of course LCHF promoters can do a lot more about concerns with sustainability, animal exploitation/ethics, convenience and so on, but anyone interested in fixing this problem already has the knowledge and tools to do so.
Look, I'm not saying it doesn't work for some people, or some people just don't like the taste of bread/pasta - but to sell it as some instant weight-loss cure, or a magic cure-all for illness is overdoing it a bit.
It's like saying, I'm only going to eat seafood - damn, everybody else should eat seafood as well!
Ultimately, just being aware about what you eat - whether it is not eating eating carbohydrates, or only eating seafood, or only eating organic food from a certain brand - is better than just mindlessly eating what's in front of you, or near to hand.
The article states:
> The causes of the worldwide weight gain are complicated, and the story is different from country to country. There are some common trends: Rising incomes, global trade, changing food supplies, and declines in physical activity all contribute.
Basically - we're eating more, and exercising less.
So if we did the opposite - ate less, and exercised more - that would go some way to reversing the trend.
How exactly you choose to do those things is really a personal preference - I don't think we should prescribe that you need to do by eating less carbohydrates.
I think it is all part of a trend of outsourcing ownership of your health to doctors and hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry, all of whom have financial disincentives to really fix this issue. Nassim Taleb's writings on iatrogenics was really eye-opening in this regard.
In fact, I said the exact opposite. It's very simple - eat less, and exercise more.
How you choose to do that is up to you.
To your other point - calling it a fad - it is most certainly a fad.
There are entire books and TV shows devoted to this low-carbohydrate phenomenon.
I've had friends who were previously •completely* uninterested in their health jump up and down in front of me, talking about how going "low-carb" changed their life, and how I should stop eating those evil carbohydrates, and stop eating so much fruit (I confess, I do eat a lot of fruit).
But try to get them to go for a run at lunchtime? Or reduce their portion size? Not on yoru life...lol.
And your final point, about "outsourcing ownership of your health to doctors and hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry"....I'm not really sure where you got that from my post.
Although now you do mention it - I do happen to trust doctors/hospitals. I don't believe they're in some vast conspiracy - on the whole, I think they're looking out for us. Their advice has been pretty constant for the last century or so.
Get fresh air, exercise, and eat things in moderations. I mean, if you think there's an "exercise lobby group", or a "eat smaller portions" conglomerate who are out to get you, sure.
But it's a bit like saying - "I have a cold, but my doctor said I should get some bed rest and drink lots of water" - conspiracy!
http://www.theonion.com/article/powerful-rest-and-fluids-ind...
Gosh, I love the Onion...haha.
Anyhow - summary - I don't think caring about what you eat is necessarily bad thing - just the very act of being conscious or what you're putting in your body is a good thing. But I think general guidelines - like, eat different foods in moderation are better, and easier for people to stick to over time.
I saw a movie recently called That Sugar Film that explores this kind of eating. One of the key takeaways is it actually important where the calories come from and not just the amount.
If they could just focus their message to "eat as little artificial sugar and starch as possible", I think fewer people would cry out in protest.
It's my takeaway, anyway. I lost 10 pounds in a month when I quit eating soft bread, pasta, potatoes and most sweets. My diet was basically hard bread with cheese for breakfast, salad for lunch, meat and vegetables for dinner.
It can be a very effective start to a lifestyle change. It can be hard to keep up, though (and expensive, depending on where you live).
In addition, humans used to live in towns where they'd always be walking around whereas the now suburban lifestyles require cars to get around and so less exercise.
Your metabolism most certainly does not just pause. There is a well known term for people whose metabolism isn't doing anything. It's "dead".
Eating less is cheaper than eating more. Drinking water instead of sugary drinks is free or cheaper, assuming you avoid bottled water. Walking more is free. Running is free.
Instead, the things you see advertised are: big meals, value for money eating, exercise equipment, gym memberships, soft drinks, juices, supplements (my god, the advertising of supplements in Australia is insane).
And so, because of the onslaught of advertising, people think the ab-roller is going to eliminate their gut or they're tempted by the advertising of treats or "healthy" juice and so on.
The one point they kind of sold me on is supplements, as in vitamins and minerals. The argument is that even fresh veg these days don't contain the same amount of nutrients as before, so it's a "good idea" to top up with supplements.
Today, automated cooking makes food that is unhealthy. Industrially processed food equals bad food. I think this is a large part of the reason for obesity. There is so little healthy food that is cheap and requires no manual effort to cook.
With sufficiently advanced robotics, the equation changes. All food that humans can cook well today becomes available with no cooking-cost. The availability of tasty and healthy food, at low cost, with no effort involved in preparing it, should be a game changer in more ways than one - and obesity ought to go down.
(Side-note: that the cost of cooking today is not in money, but in effort and time, doesn't make it less deterring but rather more so.)
Time and effort is what make life fun!
I bet most here never had nutrition/sport theory in school, I did have that. If you know how your body works, how food is processed internally and what is good/bad fats/sugars/carbs then it is not hard to eat healthy. I don't do much sport and still don't gain. The rest is selfdiscipline
Do people really not notice the correlation between eating crappy food and feeling like crap?
You literally are what you eat.
Key changes to introduce to your diet: 1. Eat less carbohydrates, especially those with high glycemic index (eg. pasta, pizza, bread). Ideally replace them with beans, lentils, peas (they have lower glycemic index). 2. Remove alcohol from your diet. It is highly caloric and increases your insulin levels (which will make you eat more). 3. Remove sugar and sweets from your diet. Use xylitol as alternative to sugar (it has lower glycemic index).
Additionally: 1. Drink water, avoid soft drinks, juices or milk. Do not add sugar or milk to your coffee. 2. Eat more protein (fish, chicken, beef, eggs). 3. Eat more high quality fats (fish oil, nut oil, olive oil, coconut oil). 4. Eat more vegetables, but avoid potato, sweet potato, corn. 5. To maintain results, motivation and high energy - excercise (eg. running, gym) for 1 hour every 2-3 days. It will make you feel great, after 1-2 months you will start missing the training day :) 6. Let yourself enjoy anything, in any quantity once in a week (but consider avoiding alcohol) to deal with your cravings and temporarily boost metabolism.
The advice is based on Tim Ferris recommendations from his "4 Hour Body" book [1]. I followed it and it simply works.
Well, actually, we do. Just stop eating sugar like it's food. (Yes, I know it's addictive, that's part of the problem.)
The UK Government's sugar tax disproportionately hits the poor and only applies to some sugary foods. Indeed,sugar consumption per capita has been falling. Which food will be taxed next? Ultimately it's up to individuals to solve their own problems. If people elect to spend what money they have on healthy foods, suppliers will meet the challenge because that's their business.
[ Correction: all foods are healthy though not if you eat inappropriate amounts of them. ]
Sure, but the problem is the externalities. We don't say 'it's up to factories to solve their emission problems on their own' either - well, we do, but we impose limits on their emissions. It's politically (and arguably morally) infeasible to do the same for weight, so we do the next best thing.
"Daisy, daisy..." sings HAL while pedalling...
e.g cut out fat = products that have more sugar and salt sell more. cut out sugar = products that have more fat and salt sell more. end result will still be bad eating.
Industrial scale farming is creating "institutionalized" plants - we call them "fields", but they could be looked at as industrial plant camps, were plants don't have to do any effort to grow - there are no pests, there is no competition from other plants, there's plenty of food (fertilizer) and water, etc. We take care of everything for them so the plants grow up big and "lazy".
Similar thing is happening to farmed animals, who are fed these "lazy" plants and kept in similar "food camps" in conditions which prevent physical movement, competition or effort.
Plants or animals, goal is to obtain highest weight in shortest amount of time in order to increase profits.
I remember the taste of the vegetables from my grandmother's garden. Rich, full and powerful. Plants were strong, showed signs of fighting for survival - having scars and being bitten by insects, etc.
My grandmother took care of those plants personally. She talked to them, she touched them, she collected pests manually. Similar thing with the animals that she had on her farm.
Of course there was no obesity in my grandmother's village.
I think there is a connection between "lazy" plants and low energy that it generates in their consumers - be it humans or animals. This "laziness" and the instruction to grow to large sizes may be transmitted from species to species by mechanisms which might not be known yet.
I've lost 52kg in the last year, and a large part of that was eating less processed food. Not because I am a hippy, but because almost every part of food processing leads to easier to digest, more calorie rich, food.
It is almost impossible to get fat (in my experience) from eating unprocessed vegetables, leafs, and whole cooked pieces of meat -- the food is mostly not calorie rich enough. It is however a much more expensive and time consuming way to live.
I think you've been scammed by the "organic and natural" veggie industry.
As for time consuming, have no idea why. Most of the dishes that I do take from 15-30 minutes to prepare.
This fear of processed foods is without grounds.
Nutrition is one such area, were a lot of people are experts because they know words like 'protein' and 'aminoacid'.
Thinking intuitively or using metaphor is a good way to break out of dogma. We understand a lot more than we care to admit this way.
'Crazy' intuitive ideas often serve as vectors or pointers in a certain direction, which can then be explored using rigorous scientific methods.
That's what I meant when I sad 'just planting seeds'. Maybe it will inspire someone to actually look into it.
I think it's more likely that we're living in a system that seeks unwittingly to extract the most value, hence the lazy plants and the lazy people. Lazy plants is obvious, but why are lazy people more valuable? Because they are perfect office drones, and that's what you need to keep the system running, or growing even. Not healthy people that wouldn't tolerate sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day.
So, reasonable thinking, just skip the pseudo/non-science stuff because it just gets in the way. My take on your idea is just speculation and conjecture that isn't wrong prima facie, and is also unfalsifiable.
Of course there is none, that's why I prefixed that with "here's a crazy theory of mine".
How can we explore new ideas if we're going to stay within the bounds of what science can substantiate ?
I think brainstorming, throwing random ideas around, even stupid or absurd ones is very useful.
We have no problem listening to songs or poetry or enjoying art that doesn't make sense .. not because we get valid information out of it, but because they trigger thought processes inside us which can later lead to useful insights...
Sometimes even totally absurd ideas can lead you in the right direction.
But anyway, the "lazy" plants thing..
The idea that there is a "life force" that can be transmitted from one animal/plant to another is as old as humans. People have eaten hearts of animals, drank their blood, sought and consumed power giving plants since forever.
But does such a thing even exist ? What is this "life force" ?
Is it what the Chinese call "chi", or the Japanese call "ki" or the Indians call "prana" or the ancient greek stoics called "pneuma" or the Hebrews call "ruach"... ?
It's that thing which differentiates a living cell from a cell that's just died - structurally and biochemically they are almost identical - yet in one of them all the processes have stopped and disintegration into basic molecules has begun.
It's something that living beings (plants) extract from sunlight and then send over the conveyor belt we call "the food chain", to be transformed, stored and used for physical movement, observation and even thought.
It's not just "calories", there is a certain strength - desire to live and procreate - inherent in any living being which is different from the total amount of energy released during oxidation - which we call "calories".
It's dangerous for a scientist to explore this area because it's bounding this "spirituality" thing which is just not good, because science is against anything with soul and stuff.. But maybe that's just dogma and it stops us from seeing more of reality.
So I don't think it's totally absurd to look into these ancient concepts with fresh eyes and not fear the ridicule.
Edit: Sorry, got carried away ... I've got code to ship !
But honestly just the metaphor of humans being like lazy plants is already deep enough, it's already a window into the human soul, you don't need a literal connection.