As Obesity Takes a Greater Toll in Covid Deaths, Health Officials Are Quiet
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wfae.org
I agree that maybe health officials could use this as a good opportunity to encourage people to lose weight. But let's be realistic, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to lose serious weight. And don't we all know that harping on it even more will make very little difference?
I had a conversation with a group of friends and the comment came up that unvaccinated people were creating a serious burden on the healthcare system. Someone else said that obese people are putting the real burden and that is where we should focus out effort.
Both statements are true, but only one of those problems can be solved in literally a few minutes with a single shot that is already paid for by the government. I think we need to go for the low hanging fruit first when we are dealing with a global pandemic.
It is not hard to lose weight. The truth is, people just don't want to not do the things that make them fat.
Covid has hit those countries hardest that are most obese. Maybe those countries should take a good, hard look at their own, sick cultures and stop trying to export their disease around the world.
Do that enough over a long enough period of time, and your body starts to become immune to the insulin it produces. And you become a Type 2 diabetic. And as a T2 diabetic, it becomes very easy to put on weight and very hard to lose it.
That’s not the only mechanism for becoming a T2, but it is a key one.
This article from a Dr does a pretty good job of clarifying. https://www.imaware.health/blog/artificial-sweeteners-and-in...
But going by the fact that many obese people want to lose weight but still cannot do the things you mention shows that they are not easy.
I know it feels good to be judgemental and to sound tough, but you’re helping exactly no one with that attitude.
It sounds a lot as though the obese then suffer a severe addiction if they can't make even small changes to their lifestyle in order to directly save and improve their lives on both short and long term scales.
If that's the case, shouldn't we be pressuring them to get help? Obviously i'm not sure how you feel about alcohol or opiate addictions, but assuming you think we should warn people of the dangers of drug overuse and addiction, shouldn't we do the same for the obese and their addictions?
Also, i am rather genuinely curious on one point:
What makes some people seem to have such a hard time compared to others? How come some people can consume the same food overall, but still maintain the ability to self regulate instead of greatly overeating?
So yes, help similar to alcohol or drug addicts would likely help a lot.
But that’s the thing. For me it’s easy not to shoot heroin or drink 20 beers. For addicts it’s incredibly hard not to. And not for a lack of wanting to quit; they have a disease, maybe they’re on drugs to alleviate the mental pain of issues from their youth or whatever.
And just like anti drug advice isn’t “well stop putting that needle in your arm, simple isn’t it?”, anti obesity advice isn’t “stop putting that cheeseburger in your mouth”.
I'm a little short on time, so I'll also concisely say that at first I referenced addiction almost as if to show similarities and contrasts (i didn't fully consider it a real one), but now on further thought it really does seem like a true addiction...
Claiming that this is a simple problem simply proves how willfully ignorant you are of the myriad of problems encountered and what kinds of solutions actually work.
We can wait.
The human body is very good at conserving mass. I can lose ~5 lbs easily - no problem, which is why maybe skinny people think it's so easy to lose weight. But once you really start cutting beyond a superficial amount, your metabolism starts to fight it. Hunger hormones ramp up, and your metabolic rate at rest starts to fall. Additionally, the lighter you get, the less energy you need to move. Your body goes into a kind of conservation starvation mode. Now the amount of food you are eating each day and have grown accustomed to eating is too much, you have to cut more or increase your workouts.
Add to all this the tons of unknowns about gut microbiome affecting mood, cravings, energy levels and a million other things and all the other factors that can come into play.
I'm talking about a zero-calorie fast, just water / black coffee / tea.
The problems you describe apply to low calorie diets, not fasting.
I went from >95 kg to 70 using the methods described above. I held that weight for several years, and I can control my weight up and down by manipulating the number of days a week I fast.
I know that it is possible to consistently, reliably lose fat because I did it, and continue to do it when necessary. Lots of people have done the same.
People are good at finding reasons why they can't lose weight. The truth is, they just don't want to do what is necessary.
The hardest part of fasting is not physical but social. When you fast regularly over years, you experience how weird our culture's relationship with food is.
We do not eat because we are really hungry. We eat to be social or comfort ourselves or because we are bored.
Fasting does not work the same way for everyone. Which is why the many studies looking into fasting and weight loss don't show an across the board success and has a lot of variability. In fact, many meta-analysis show that intermittent fasting for 24 hrs up to 2 days a week shows about the same amount of weight loss as regular calorie restriction diets. They also show a similar dropout rate to other diets indicating that it is no easier than say an Atkins diet.
* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/...
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
tl;dr: people are getting fatter even though they’re consuming less sugar and calories than 20 years ago, eating less than people 100 years ago and burning more calories. Even animals are getting fatter. Possibly pollutants in the air are responsible.