As obesity keeps rising, more Americans are just giving up
latimes.com
latimes.com
The FDA could also be more eager in approving appetite-regulating drugs, allowing people to choose to take on certain risk in exchange for large potential weight loss. Several effective agents have been known since the 1920s; is a small risk of cataracts or heart valve damage in a small number of people really worth allowing millions of people to be sicker than they would otherwise be?
Speaking of drugs: smoking decreases BMI quite a bit. Granted, it damages the lungs, but like most things, tobacco has a mixture of positive and negative effects. Given that we have an obesity crisis, was taboo-ing one of the more popular and effective anti-obesity tools really the right choice?
We'd prefer very much going around believing that behavior is somehow disjoint from genetics. That just isn't true, and as long we continue believing it's true, we're going to make bad public policy.
It is not just genetics and it is not just self control. If you eat more fat and no carbs is much easier to eat less calories in total.
But sugar in particular has an addiction characterisc. Once you go some time without it, you don't miss it as much anymore.
And fat is also delicious.
I personally rarely drink alcohol, don't smoke, take drugs etc etc. I still don't think any of the above should be forbidden. I've found it's a good idea to me - cheaper, better for my health, better for my mental state. Somehow I'm able to follow this without the state compelling me to do so.
Should we ban alcohol as well - as that is how "society works"? It does a lot of harm in many countries.
I don't understand why every good idea has to be enforced with a law.
(As an aside, I'm from a country where bicycle helmets are mandatory, despite their dubious safety benefits, and the fact as soon as the law was introduced cyclist numbers plummeted).
Consumer-choice and personal responsibility is a nice thing as long as that choice isn't systematically undermined by market forces.
FTFY.
Different people accept different levels of control over their lives, and feel they have different levels of control over their own lives. This can even change over one's life. And sometimes it's not a feeling but a much more objective fact. I know people whose interests would be better served if someone else made all their financial decisions because they have a long pattern of poor decision making regardless of the monetary amount. I don't feel I should force such a thing on those people when they don't want it, but often it's possible for an in-between solution they find agreeable enough of removing some autonomy but not all. This delicate balance is best done as locally as possible.
It's all very variable. I strongly disagree with a dichotomy I see often propped up of "we need the full force of the federal government in our daily lives" against "move to Somalia if you don't like it". A better approach is federalism. In the US at least there's been "enough" federalism to keep most larger groups of different people happy enough (even now I know I can move to a different state and be free of some of what I dislike about my current state) but the trend is less state decision and more federal control. Extending this to the city level for large cities works fine too. I don't care if Seattle wants to enact some nanny law, maybe the people of Seattle want that and indeed will have better lives because of it, but I don't care because I don't live there nor have to live there. Even if Washington State, where I do live, does something I hate, I can move. When it's the whole US that has a law that I really find unbearably intrusive, things suddenly become a lot more challenging because the cost of exit is much higher. When you can't really do anything about it you either become unhappy or rely on stoicism or whatever to get you through, it would be better though if the negative factor wasn't even there to begin with.
* Don't consume soda or sugary drinks of any kind
* Go on 3 mile walks 3-4x weekly
* Have switched to soylent 100% of meals to make calorie counting dead simple
* Recently cut out alcohol too
You can control the input in that equation, but on the output the body is quick to go into calorie preservation state any time the balance goes negative. Lack of energy, irritability, mid-day fatigue, general weakness, mild headaches - the list goes on.
In an ideal world everyone runs marathons while sustaining themselves on water and celery sticks. In reality maintaining consistent caloric deficit while trying to remain a functional member of the society is challenging.
You're right that "eat less, fatty" is not a helpful message. That's actually the key point in these discussions - we do know how to avoid weight gain in the abstract sense (consume less than you burn), but the implementation of that is what's difficult. Different foods have different effects on metabolism; it's difficult to count calories accurately; people often overestimate the calories that exercise burns and underestimate their consumption. It's made more difficult by sedentary lifestyles, prepared foods, and so on.
If you are gaining a pound a month consuming nothing but soylent, then you're consuming too much of it. There's no way around that fact. But the point is that it's not a failing on your part - it just demonstrates how difficult it is in practice to control one's own lifestyle.
That is incorrect, but it does help sell gym memerships.
Moreover, expending more calories via exercise typically leads to weight gain, according to emprirical studies (and anecdotal look around gym's elliptical machines next time you're in one) https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gai...
Fat accummulation (and disposal) are governed by insulin, whose production is triggered by sugars and other carbohydrates.
Confusingly, consuming a high-fat, low-protein and zero-carbohydrate diet will also lead to a severe decrease in calories (as it's pretty hard to overdose on olives, coconut oil or lardo), but it's nevertheless a correlation.
"While this study didn’t track the women’s eating and movement habits away from the lab, it is likely that those who gained weight began eating more and moving less when they weren’t on the treadmills, “probably without meaning to,” Dr. Gaesser said."
Expending more calories via exercise increases one's weight when you eat more calories than you burned. There's nothing new there.
You'd think with a thesis this obvious it should be relatively easy to reproduce.
Hard to discuss the specifics of this exact experiment without knowing the details, but you have the control group that admits they have a weight problem and honestly tries to lose weight by signing up for this experiment. All of a sudden they turn into a bunch of cheaters buying up passes to an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is every obese person walking around extremely weak-willed? Is every thin person you see meticulously tracking their caloric intake and output?
What about entire countries that have low obesity rates? Are French or Koreans strong-willed at national level, consistently under-eating and over-exercising?
There are thousands of examples online of people who've lost weight and maintained that weight loss, not to mention the thousands of people who manipulate their weight at will to compete in events with weight classes.
Studies about diet and exercise are usually poorly designed and poorly funded, so they don't always accurately reflect reality and the existence of thousands of successes isn't invalidated by a poorly run study. Nor is our knowledge of basic physiology.
Rule of thumb: any study that relies on self-reporting diets is basically useless. It's not about lying. People are just really bad at measurement unless they explicitly measure every gram of food that enters their mouth. Intentions don't affect the quality of an implementation if you don't know how to implement something successfully. People who are underweight tend to eat less than they think and people who are overweight tend to eat more than they think.
Note that studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes.
Distilling these issues into one of willpower is just incredibly misguided IMO and reflective more of the views of journalists who struggle with their weight and pass on the results of poorly designed studies. I addressed what I thought was a better way of looking at these issues in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827878
It's not as though Americans have "lost willpower" over the course of a couple generations. We just started eating more and moving less.
Why we started eating more isn't a mystery. Agriculture and food companies started processing food to be less satiating and more addictive by adding sugar and fat to sell more (a massive simplification of history, admittedly). Obesity wasn't an epidemic back when we were eating whole foods since they're so much more satiating and it's difficult to maintain a caloric surplus on a diet of lentils and vegetables or whatever.
As countries like France, China, Japan, and others who have more recently maintained their normal weights on a population level get introduced to these processed Western foods, they too are seeing their rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes go up.
That is correct. I am happy to fill that knowledge gap, though, if you have any links handy.
> studies in which the number of calories a person consumes are tracked by the researchers leave no ambiguity in the direct relationship between the number of calories a person consumes and how their weight changes
Can you point me to those?
These two links are great starting points, and link to the studies if you feel like reading them:
https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-l...
https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-t...
It can be that our models for calculating TDEE, etc. are wrong and not accounting for a multitude of factors that might affect energy expenditure but still, it boils down to calories in -> calories out in the most simplistic level.
Calorie present != calorie consumed != calorie processed by digestive system != calorie deposited in the fat tissue
If all calories were the same, consuming 300 calories from a can of Coke and consuming 300 calories of green salad would lead to same outcomes. In long term they do not.
There's a reason why you lose weight if you have a tapeworm or have chronic diarrhea while eating the same amount of food isn't a mystery to the scientific community.
Most people don't see that much variation between the calories that pass their mouths and those that are digested by their GI tract. It's usually constant enough that calories in - calories out is enough to figure out how much you need to eat to lose weight. Even if there was a disparity between calories consumed and calories processed by the GI tract, that would only present itself as a "higher/lower metabolism" and wouldn't mean lowering calories wouldn't work to lower weight.
You can't get around physics and biology.
Okay, but that seems like an outlier case. The study I am looking for would be summarized roughly as "100 fat people start on a lower-calorie diet and increase their exercise routine over the course of 180 days. 98% of them (some statistical variation to account for weird genetics) consistently lose X pounds, a large group (60-70%) loses as many as Y pounds".
Most experiments that were set up that way either ended up reporting the results "inconclusive", or worse, as the caloric intake generally decreased, the weight increased http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(96)00456-1/abstract
I am looking for the one, or two, or a dozen, that doesn't. Should be relatively easy to replicate.
It may be hard to limit calories without feeling hungry on a mostly soylent diet. Salad and veggies make it easier because they're low on calories, but still have a lot of bulk which helps stave off hunger.
* Your gut biome might need a "reset". Sometimes people experience extended weight gain after antibiotics because they ended up with a different, less effective biome. (Soylent might also contribute to this issue.)
* Another health issue changed your digestive process
* You're losing muscle mass, making it easier to gain fat
* You're sleeping more poorly or are more stressed
Calorie counting really isn't sufficient to know what's going on with weight changes. The factors are numerous.
A day fast is really not that bad IMO. I used to do them every sunday and found it a really effective tool to get from "obese" to "overweight" (BMI). Got much less effective as I approached "normal" though.
* Are you actually tracking your calories with something like MyFitnessPal? What's your calorie intake?
* Are you tracking honestly? Especially if/when you have a bad day, or cheat day, or whatever you want to call it.
* Are you tracking accurately? If you aren't using a scale or measuring cup, the answer is probably no. Most people severely underestimate the size of their portions.
If you're gaining 10-15lbs per year, then you know how much you're overconsuming. An annual gain of 15 lbs * 3500 Calories per pound of fat is about 150 Calories per day over your TDEE.
Reduce your daily caloric intake by 250-500 Calories and you should see weight loss over the long term.
If not, and you actually do know exactly how many calories you're consuming and have been tracking your weight to see how it changes, then you need to see a physician.
I have dropped weight only through calories counting, I've done cycles of bulk/cut while weightlifting, dropping weight boils down to "calories in -> calories out", we might not have a very good model of this, we might be overlooking a multitude of variables that control energy expenditure but we can't create fat from nowhere, we need to consume and have spare energy to store it.
It's not easy but it is simple. Again: I'm not saying our models for calculating TDEE or how energy restriction affects our body completely but if you are expending more calories than you are eating you are going to consume fat to create energy.
Try this: drop how many calories you are eating by another 100~200kcal/day for a week, see if the trend changes (a moving average works). If not, drop another 100~200kcal/day and watch for a week. Being STRICT is the "not easy" part.
This question touches on some very deep and controversial ideas kicking around in the current conversation. The question of whether we have an inherent "human nature", a biological substrate that informs our capabilities and behavior, touches on everything from education to tech employment. I don't want to debate the subject generally.
But can we agree, for the specific case of food consumption that
1) we have very strong impulses that are difficult to consciously resist; that
2) these impulses originate in biology; that
3) the existence of exceptional willpower is a mark of exceptional self-discipline, a level not practical to achieve for most; and that
4) advertisers prey on the difficulty most people experience in controlling their food behavior?
Advertising is no doubt a factor in the obesity epidemic, but I'm not sure that's among the primary causes of it. It seems to me that food portion sizes have increased tremendously over the past four decades. Purveyors of food often seem to peddle the sheer size of portions as features. Additionally, foods that once might have been thought outrageously decadent, such as "coffee" covered in whipped-cream and loaded with caramel (basically a dessert in a cup), and pizza with crust infused with cheese, are now perceived as normal things to consume, quite possibly on a daily basis. My non-scientific observation is that the normalization of consumption of huge portions of calorie-dense "foods" is directly correlated with increases in obesity. Since we're not willing to de-normalize the former as far as I can tell, the emerging societal trend is to normalize the latter.
[0] "http://www.livescience.com/49-decade-study-americans-taller-...
Are people in low-obesity countries more resistant to such biological impulses? Do they have fewer food ads? Are they able to resist those advertisers in a more coherent fashion? Or just exhibit better willpower at national level?
I don't agree that this is what's going on.
People don't avoid obesity by exceptional willpower. They just have healthy eating habits, usually ones formed during childhood.
Likewise, overcoming obesity and returning oneself to a healthier weight that one can maintain requires changing habits and one's relationship with food.
Habit formation and modification can be difficult, but it's sufficiently well understood that it can be implemented.
The difficulty is getting information into people's hands about how to modify habits successfully (I like the book The Power of Habit), cutting through the misinformation surrounding what constitutes healthy eating habits and how to lose weight, and often just education about how to cook food cheaply and in a way that doesn't seem intimidating to people who are pressed for time and resort to fast food out of convenience.
When people know the concrete steps one must take to achieve something, they become that much more willing to believe they can do it.
</sarcasm>
An excellent book on this topic is The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung
Obesity is a public health problem, like tobacco smoking or STIs. There's no secret - avoid ling disease by not smoking, and avoid STIs by not having unprotected sex. But clearly the "it's stimple, just fix it" approach isn't effective at improving the overall health of a population.
I honestly don't care at all about the overall health of the population. I really don't. Not that I wish them any ill-will, but I can't even begin to muster up the slightest bit of care for people I don't know ruining their lives because they eat too much or smoke. It's just not even on my radar.
I realise I'm not supposed to admit this, but I also realise I'm not the only one who thinks it.
So the question isn't what happened to personal responsibility. It's why exercising that responsibility is apparently so much more difficult than in the past. Address that, and you'll find the "agency" problem largely solves itself.
Is that not the effect of "asking the government to step in and help us?"
* Most industrial food products are adulterated with dairy, sugar, or both
* Industrial food is also cheap and widespread. It takes dedication to avoid it or restrict its impact: At parties, the default non-alcoholic beverage is sugar water, and the default food is pizza
* "Sleep is for the weak" is an oft-repeated, sometimes praised meme
* Driving everywhere is expected in many cities. In some neighborhoods, "taking a walk" is looked upon with suspicion
* Most jobs now are low on physical intensity, while work hours and work-related stress remain high
* The most popular recreations involve "screen time"
* Fitness is polluted with snake oil, "bro science" superstition, and image-driven advice; exercise and training itself as a form of character-building is viewed derisively
* Diet advice is similarly polluted with snake oil and superstition. Commerce drives the market, leading to quick-fix bandaids that promise a temporary change followed by a return to the original (unhealthy) habit
Lots of people are stuck in this scenario, because it takes uncommon dedication and some financial freedom to break with the culture and build a lifestyle of your own design. When their health fails we all pay the price.
Note that you can select earlier years using the controls below the map. Some depressing observations:
• In 1990, the highest rate was 15% (Mississippi) and the lowest was 6.9% (Colorado).
• In 2000, the highest was 23.9% (West Virginia) and the lowest 14.5% (Colorado). Note that in a mere 10 years, the lowest was almost equal to what had been the highest.
There are plenty of other charts on the site. There is one for physical inactivity. That shows two interesting things:
• The states with the highest obesity have the most inactivity, and the states with the least obesity the least inactivity.
• However, for each state the level of inactivity has remained fairly flat over the last 10 years, even though the obesity rate has risen in those states. Inactivity might explain why some states are more or less obese than others, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with why we are getting fatter everywhere.
- Why does American food go bad so much later than back home? It shocks me how strawberries here can stay in the fridge for over a week and not go bad, same about tomatoes, or yogurt, or even bread! Back home if you don't eat your strawberries on the same day, the next day they're just gonna be mushy, and the day after they're gonna be inedible. I get so skeptical whenever I see any food that can last over a year
- The portions are just monstrous, I remember when I was new I couldn't finish a single restaurant main course, and now I sometimes catch myself that I could actually get a main course and an appetizer, and a dessert! Wouldn't restaurants make more money if they sold less food for the same price?
- The culture of "snacking" is quite interesting, I used to only eat during dinner/breakfast, now I find myself snacking in between, because snacks are so accessible and yummy and almost addictive
- Ingredients are often tasteless, so you guys add a lot of sauces to make them taste better. The sauce usually contains sugar and other stuff that doesn't help you stay fit. Why not just have food with more natural flavor? This applies to everything from blueberries to meat
- Meat sizes are completely bizarre! I've never seen such huge chicken breasts where I'm from. They're also quite bland and not soft/juicy at all. How does this even work?
- The concept of zoning is a disaster, if I wanna eat I need to sit in a car and drive where the restaurants are, and if I want booze I need to sit in a car and drive where the bars are, and if I wanna work again sit in a car and go where work is, then for sleep I need to sit in a car and drive home. Why?? Why can't I live in a residential building where first floor is restaurants and cafes, and a few blocks away is my work? You have huge residential communities where it would be foolish to even attempt to walk out of them, because the nearest grocery store is several miles away! Who came up with this, and how can this be a thing?
- Take a closer look at the ingredients in your bread. You're most likely buying bread with preservatives. There are bread makers that make bread without them and those will go bad sooner. Look for sprouted bread. Those can go bad within a couple days of the sell by and the sell by itself is only like 3 days from when they get it in.
- Why would a customer want to pay more for less versus your competitors?
- Ingredients are tasteless because same as with breeding fruits for transport, we do not optimize for flavor but quantity and cost. Good meat is a function of what the animal eats and if they exercise. What you're looking for can be most likely found at your local farmers market.
I'm part of that privileged 5%. I lost around 60 pounds in 2009-2010 and I've kept it off. It really is a lifestyle change. You have to be constantly aware of the portions you choose and remember what you've already eaten that day to keep in "budget". There are tools and processes that can help, but it's a constant struggle against your body that is constantly lying to your brain. I can definitely see why many people would give up.
I lost 55 lbs and have kept it off for a year now.
It's a constant struggle. If I stop watching what I'm eating, I'll start overeating immediately and start gaining weight. I went to a wedding a week or 2 ago and gained 5-7 lbs. Watching my diet since then, I've dropped most of it again. If I hadn't watched it immediately, it would have stuck and I'd have a hard time losing it again.
I'm very careful about what I eat for breakfast and lunch, to the point of almost always having the same thing. Dinner is very varied, but I still have to watch things or I'll go overboard.
I eat burgers, Mexican food, Italian, pizza, etc etc... But I do not eat dessert. I've found that there's no way to avoid gaining weight if I eat any dessert at all.
To deal with my sweets craving, I drink diet sodas (they've improved a lot lately) and Tic Tacs.
If I really need a snack, it'll be peanuts and pretzels. They're high in calories, but no sugar.
There is of course the direct effect of the hundreds of thousands of vehicular related deaths per year (globally) as well as serious injuries but there are a bunch of other effects.
One of these is the change in urban planning where life is centered around the car such that Americans, in particular, walk far less than people in other countries [1].
There's a big difference here between walking and needing to walk. People in NYC for example pretty much need to walk. I'm not saying it's impossible to become obese when your daily life requires you or even just encourages you to walk more but it sure makes it more difficult.
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t...
Convenient food, that tastes good but is bad for you will beat out inconvenient food that tastes "ok" and is healthy for you.
For a lot of people cooking is just more work and if they've got the choice and the money they'll order take out or buy pre-made ready meals.
Moaning about sugar and advertising is just tinkering around the edges, to me if you want to solve this problem you've got to make eating healthy as convenient if not more convenient as eating badly.
Yes personal responsibility and all, but we've made it awful easy to fall into this trap.
Personally, I maxed out at a BMI of 34. I lost about 70 pounds, got back into the normal BMI range, and have stayed there for about a decade now. I changed my diet, changed my physical activities, and changed a lot of habits and modes of thinking. That last one is perhaps most important of all. For example, as kids, we were taught not to waste food, and that meant eating everything there was. Well, cleaning your plate (and the pot) isn't going to put food on the plates of starving children. Whether you eat it or not, the waste happened at the supermarket when you bought too much food!
My brother saw me losing weight and wanted to do it too, so I tried to help him. He hated the food I was now eating. He didn't want to work out. He didn't want to change the way he thought. Instead, he got a lot fatter and, eventually, a sleeve gastrectomy. He's not in the normal BMI range yet, but he's been making steady progress and it's not optional for him. He literally can't eat enough to stay fat. His stomach is now tiny and fills up rather quickly. The prep for the surgery was harsh, and included a brutal, several week long crash diet. The surgery itself went off without a hitch, but he still had to recover on a morphine drip. I have no idea what kind of pain that involves, but it can't be pleasant. Bottom line, he thought he was choosing the easy way at the time, but we now both know it was the hard way. Harder by far. I got healthy. He inflicted a disability on himself that has the side-effect of losing weight. He still isn't active and, not surprisingly, has terrible energy levels.
After both our experiences, I can reasonably say the media does a terrible job of helping people. It tells them about healthy things to eat, but never mentions these things are only healthy if you eat them instead of your usual fare, and in appropriate amounts. It tells people they need to be ripped, cross-fitting gym-bunnies to be fit, when doing just about anything besides sitting on your butt will be an improvement for many people. Finding a physical activity you can enjoy is far more important than being ripped. Above all, it rarely attempts to help people change the way they think, which is the key to making permanent changes.
TL;DR: If I had to offer one piece of advice to those wishing to lose weight and become more active, it would be to ignore all the crap articles out there on diet fads and gym-crazes and pay some attention to how you think about food and activity. Change how you think, and everything else will come as a consequence of that change.
The idea that a study conclusively demonstrated that in a meaningful way seems extraordinarily unlikely. I'd be awful curious to see the methodology of that.
Calories in - calories out = fat accumulation. It is literally that simple.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-suga...
Hold on! The market consists of both suppliers and customer. One would think that being fat is not profitable for the latter. Meanwhile, only 3% of Japanese people have a BMI over 30, while 32% of Americans do. It must be that Japanese markets don't optimize for profit! Or maybe you got the source of the problem wrong. Guess which one I think it is.
> Mexico has shown that regulation does work, they regulated sugar which has had a positive effect on health.
Hungary has a higher sugar tax, had it for a longer time, and it appears to have no effect on health at all. Go figure.
IMO it's not so much about education as about how to help people shape their habits. People already know that candy-bars and french-fries correlate to obesity, after all.
> that simple
Or at least, so close to being that simple that there's no point confusing people with erroneous details.
Some people consume too much calorically as a mental-health coping mechanism. Some people consume too much calorically because the food culture they were raised in promotes that. Some people consume too much calorically because they have a lack of real options to purchase fresh whole foods.
Some people don't expend enough calories because their lifestyle makes it difficult (work + family + etc). Some people don't expend enough calories because the lifestyle they were raised with doesn't promote that.
These are just some of the ways that simple equation you've posted become immediately more complex.
The reality is the vast majority of people eat way too much, and the dietary guidelines for caloric intake are far too high for a largely sedentary society.
It is somewhat harder to stay on the diet while traveling, attending conferences, or business meetings. Having a host choose a place to eat, offer you local cuisine, etc makes it harder to stay in keto. Hunger though, was never a problem after the first full week.
I'm an on-and-off-again keto dieter (I appreciate that for me it seems to take at least 2-3x as long to put the weight back on as it takes to take off as I inevitably revert to former diet choices...) and I never find the transition period difficult, but there's a consistent point where I hit "eh, still fat, but don't feel super fat anymore" and that's when the cravings or the pressures of eating non-keto with company have the highest chance of getting to me. There are also unforeseen stressors that can make things difficult (in my case a forced house move) but I'm ok with the state of flux. I don't want a six-pack physique enough, not really, and that's the last willpower component -- how long can you stick with it (and introduce more exercise), even with bumps and setbacks? My friend who introduced me to the diet lost 100 lbs by forcing himself to do keto for about 5 months, but he was fat enough at the start that he could stand to lose another 50 lbs but it's not as easy now. Still, he's much happier and healthier now than before. One's level of willpower is still involved even with how great keto is and is the difference between losing 50 lbs (not bad), 100 lbs (pretty awesome), and 150 lbs (your ideal).
I've tried before, but I feel like complete garbage. I'm told it goes away, but I don't really have days to waste feeling dizzy trying out something that may or not work for me.
On a global scale countries low on the obesity scale (Japan, Singapore, Korea, France) are not teeming with starving under-nourished citizens, and countries high on the obesity scale (Mexico, US) are not lacking gyms, exercise equipment, or opportunities for simple nature walks.
The fact is if you're fat, you've conditioned yourself to eat too many calories, and eating a normal amount of calories will likely leave you feeling hungrier while you adjust.
http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(96)00456-1/abstract
"In the adult US population the prevalence of overweight rose from 25.4% from 1976 to 1980 to 33.3% from 1988 to 1991, a 31% increase. During the same period, average fat intake, adjusted for total calories, dropped from 41.0% to 36.6%, an 11% decrease. Average total daily calorie intake also tended to decrease, from 1,854 kcal to 1,785 kcal (−4%). Men and women had similar trends. Concurrently, there was a dramatic rise in the percentage of the US population consuming low-calorie products, from 19% of the population in 1978 to 76% in 1991. From 1986 to 1991 the prevalence of sedentary lifestyle represented almost 60% of the US population, with no change over time."
Somebody who is using food as a coping device has an underlying issue they have to tackle before they can reduce their caloric intake. I mean, you could force folks to eat less, but you really want them eating less because it's healthier for them and that they themselves recognize and embrace that truth so they adopt the healthier habits as their personal culture to re-transmit to family and friends.
This is why poor people have greater obesity problems than the rest. Potato Chips, white bread, pasta, and of course sugar feature prominently in their daily calorie intake, these are the cheapest calories you can make a diet out of.
I'm sure there are tons of intricacies in how metabolism works, but glycogen storage in a human is about 2000 kJ. Once your deficit surpasses that (and we'll happily allow a multiple to account for any error here), your body will either consume fat or you'll experience actual low blood sugar and drop dead.
Logging and limiting calories isn't the only way to achieve CICO.
It's literally the first law of thermodynamics.
Everyone tries to over complicate things, but the reality is if you eat more calories than you burn, you will become fat.
The fact is that different calories affect our brains differently. Some cause us to crave more food, some cause us to feel satiated, etc. I hate this modern trend of saying "calories in vs calories out" as if it's a magic cure.
Of course some people are more addicted to food than others, some eat more healthy than others. But the solution nevertheless is the same.
It's actually very helpful advice but only if you are able to realize that's the only way you can predictably get rich through.
Most people choose to rather belive that they are spending not more than they believe they should or must and will not always look for new job that pays more, and instead believe that they can get rich by using tricks or will surely have some lucky break.
Same with weight loss. Calories in, calories out is a magic cure for many people but only if they are grounded enough in reality of what they can be sure about, to accept it.
Claiming "calories in calories out end of story" is like saying "the solution to aids and unwanted pregnancies is condoms." People are still getting HIV and unwanted pregnancies, and most of them know about condoms. What gives? "The solution" doesn't take into account we are mammals with millions of years of evolutionary programming driving our every action.
Honestly, ending conversations because of CICO prevents people from exploring the real problem. It's counter productive. Please take a moment and listen.
That is a gross oversimplification. Countless people, including myself, on ketogenic diets can attest to that.
The average American diet has changed dramatically in the last century with the growth of the restaurant and food processing industry. Exercise participation has actually increased substantially in the last 20 years (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2015/057.pdf) in the same time period obesity has soared.
Energy balance being responsible for weight gain is too readily used by the food processing industry in an effort to shift away blame for this epidemic.
A few instances: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/obesity-exercise... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/good-news-pepsicos-indra-nooyi-s... http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2012/07/05/is-obesi... https://therussells.crossfit.com/2015/09/23/transparency-coc...
It's literally just that simple too.
Unfortunately this isn't good advice for a fat person trying to lose weight. Even a very low IQ fat person understands that if they eat less and move more they'll lose weight. Nor is it particularly good advice for trying to craft a top-down policy unless the intention is to force people to eat a certain amount only and burn a minimum amount of energy.
At best the results range from "inconclusive" or "wide variation" to "they tried to expend more calories via exercise and gained weight, oopsie" https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/exercising-but-gai...
All the obese people you see walking around are not suffering from a lack of willpower to go on a fasting diet. All the thin people you see walking around are not meticulously tracking their calorie intake and burn.
There are people who eat more and still are thin but if you are not one of those people they should be none of your concern similarily to how people who inherited wealth - what they do - is meningless for person that was born poor, is poor and wants to get bit richer.
And fasting is conclusive anwer to weight loss if you can enforce it.
If you were in charge of getting inmate less fat that's exactly what you would order and he'd loose weight.
The problem with fasting in real world is that weight loss is not the only thing it affects end you can't ignore the side effects like you could do with an inmate.
The cost of health care to manage obesity and related issues is staggering and will only increase.
Maybe the USA should start having a BMI tax?
Really, it should be no different than any other sin tax. It's behavior you want to discourage, so tax it.
I know the PC police will eat me for lunch for saying this, but the dating pool, at least in the 20s and 30s range, shrinks considerably in the US for anybody used to European body image standards.
Whatever's happening to the population here is not normal. I don't know if it's our lifestyles becoming totally sedentary, if it's food marketing having reached absolutely irresistible heights, or if it's the lack of a culture of slow eating, but something is clearly not working and it really doesn't feel like the individual's fault, it seems actually systemic.
One thought is perhaps we should start treating the constant incessant advertisement of food the same way we treated the cigarette industry and regulate its appeal to children, put up disclaimers about what happens when you down that entire bag of cheetos etc.
Here's a Vox review/summary of a book: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect
> Flavor technology got very powerful in the early 1960s, and it wasn't long after that that we began to see the startling increases in body mass index.
> All the good stuff we grow — tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce — has gotten continually more bland. This has been measured. They have become diluted of nutrients, as well. As we selected crops for agronomic traits like yield, shelf life and disease resistant, we never selected for flavor. And we lost flavor as a result. It's reverse evolutionary pressure.
Once I got to their grocery stores and strolled around noticing the explosion of restaurants that served an increasingly sugar-laden menu, it clicked together for me.
The deferment of responsibility and lack of self-control is the problem. Of course, companies–and more specifically, their marketing teams/firms–know people are weak-minded and as a result, can more or less control people's habits (read: greed outweighs public concern). It doesn't help that the culture has tilted toward justifying poor health in the form of all the body image propaganda.
You ate what you could get your hands on and you mostly stayed in pretty average shape because food wasn't that stimulating, that heavily processed, heavily advertised, and you have to be a lot more mobile than you are today. Humans didn't evolve to have to count calories, no animal in nature does it or is capable of doing that effectively.
Also have you considered that you might have motivation and willpower far above average? Not to mention the time, money, level of education and understanding necessary to change your diet.
Ultimately you are one single data point - do you believe that everybody can do all the things you can do just as well as you? No. Why should diet be any different?
- Eggs (WIC) - Bacon (WIC) - Bananas (WIC) – a case of 100 is ~$20 - Yogurt (WIC?) - Almond Milk (justifiably more expensive, so swap with milk) - Salmon (justifiably more expensive, swap with chicken or another protein) - Cous Cous (justifiably more expensive, swap with another carb/fiber).
I'd argue that, yes, if you take the steps to build up the motivation, you can. I was a shell of a man before I started on my current path. It just takes time. I didn't start out where I am and I don't expect others to, either.