Its obesity. Caused by eating too much and probably minimal to no physical activity
Very often actually it's unrelated to eating to much and doing no physical activity (at least wrt. most obese people I ended up knowing, context: Germany/Berlin).
Most obese people I ended up knowing did had a rather controlled diet and did more sport/physical activity then your average person.
So why where they obese? Some combination of:
- They had problems with their metabolism, potential had to take medicament too.
- In their childhood they ended up getting fat due to a varity of aspects and even with strict diet and sport had a hard time of losing their weight (once you where fat enough for long enough time your body gets used to it and as such is much much more prone to add fat to your body when you eat etc.)
- there are other reasons too for other people but not people I did know close enough.
Either-way I don't know about the US but in Germany/Berlin "minimal to no physical activity" is not often the case and neither is missing discipline or laziness.
For many obese people telling them to just do more sport and eat proper is like telling a depressed person to just stand up in the morning and go out or a person with social anxiety to just leave the house. I.e. impolite, discriminatory, mean and far of reality.
I think non obese people really look down on people who are obese and have absolutely no idea what we put ourselves through to lose weight.
It's honestly disgusting and extremely damaging to mental health. You can see examples of this in the comment section here.
Stop worrying so much about what other people think and do what you think is best to take care of yourself. Get help if you need it - there are a lot of real clinical options these days. These are internet commenters who don't know you and won't ever know you, and won't care when you die. That's just life. Don't sweat it.
So if you continue to do it, fine, but be aware you’re being an ass, and not a helpful one.
What's even more sad is seeing so many of these comments directed by people who proudly announce where they work and what they do. Not even an ounce of shame to not do this from their identity attached accounts.
We shouldn't be intentionally mean (and I agree there's too much of that), but they're literally killing themselves with their lifestyle. It's something that they should be strongly dissuaded from by their peers and by society, for their own sake and society's sake. It must be the leading health crisis in rich countries right now, now that smoking is unpopular.
It's not 100% the obese person's fault: food companies have hacked their dopamine systems with added sugar/salt/MSG/etc (similar to social media companies hacking attention mechanisms), obesity is largely genetic (in terms of the tendency to overeat and ability to satiate hunger), obesity is likely triggered by some underlying mental health issue (e.g. depression), and evolution programmed us to eat us much as we can get our hands on. It's hard to fight biology. But it's not accurate that obesity is just a metabolism issue. Obese people take in too many calories, usually from added sugars and carbohydrates. They may take in 2400 calories a day when their BMR is 1600, and the chronic impact is obesity.
I.e. in the environment I grew up obesity was not very common and general seen as unhealthy and not good looking. In turn many of the people which are still obese are people where just eating less and doing more sport doesn't really work and in turn telling them to just do so is problematic.
But on the other side going just to a different part of Germany some degree of obesity caused by drinking to much beer, unhealthy food and maybe to little sport is quite common in the idk. 50+ generation.
I can understand it not working because it's hard to eat less when attempting to lose weight (something I've struggled with for a long time), but I know if I eat less calories, then I reliably lose weight. I can drop 2lb a week very easily by maintaining a deficit, but I regularly fail in my long-term objective and bounce back when I get stressed and overeat back over 2000 calories/day. So at least for me (most/all people?), it's not that eating less doesn't work, it's the inability to do that (genes/depression/stress/environment/whatever) which is the root cause.
They need to cut calories and therefore must first be able to control their intake (counting calories). Then they can cut 400cals per day, If that does not work, cut 600-800cals. 200cal steps. This always works.
Go on a low carb / ketogenic diet instead. You get to eat lots of protein and fat. You will automatically feel less hungry but also, once ketosis sets in you will have a surplus of power that you can uses for physical activity. Added bonus, your body will react to insulin again.
Yes, what I can say it will be harder for some persons than others. The hormonal environment in the body can not be disregarded and can be either disrupted or genetically different. STILL, restricting your eating habit (caloric deficit), will.always.work.
> Go on a low carb / ketogenic diet instead
Agree, it's the easiest way to lose weight. Cut out processed food, added sugars and rice/potato/bread, and the weight will drop off very easily. No need to count calories because it'll be very hard to eat too much as long as we cut out the above.
As often understood, the latter. Two factors (there are others): metabolism of fat, sugar, and protein are hormonally (such as insulin) and differentially dependent, as well as the storage of excess calories.
For a person whose body is pumping full of cortisol, thus pumping also with raised glucose and insulin levels, gradually cutting calories can results in even higher stress response, lethargy, disrupted sleep patterns, reduce satiety triggers, changed apatite towards fat and sugar, and a bunch of other problems that all contribute to the opposite desired effect of loosing weight. A body in panic mode will do about everything except loosing weight unless it is actually medically starving.
Edit: I also realized that there are major environmental differences, like where I grow up most people which where obese did try to eat less and do sport and as such the ones which are still obese are often not so because they don't eat proper and don't do sport but because they have other health issues.
... but it's the truth. I guess that would qualify as "hate-facts". Sometime, you need a good kick in the butt to get your shit together, it just happen the US is now a country of mentality inept people.
Eating too much is probably true. Healthy natural food though doesn't make you want to eat often or too much. People eat too much because they eat highly processed food with lots of sugar, salt, and artificial flavoring. Unfortunately, eating good food in North America is not possible without making a special effort. Learning how to cook is part of this effort.