Hacker News Reader

Comment by HDThoreaun | Hacker News Reader

Telling overweight people to eat less or exercise more does not work. There have been countless studies and they all agree. Obesity is clearly a complex subject, but from what I understand some people just experience reality differently in that they're constantly thinking about food. One way it was explained to me is "telling overweight people to eat less is like telling someone to set their thermostat to 40 in the winter to save on their gas bill". It's possible, but extremely uncomfortable and not a realistic solution for most.

At the end of the day heart disease is still the number one killer in this country and reducing obesity is the solution to that problem. With the government paying for the healthcare of a significant portion of the population I think its clear that we need to be pushing these drugs hard, for both the life saving and economic saving aspects.

View on HN

Looking at weight gain for immigrants and long-term visitors really shows how hopeless this is to fight individually. It’s not that other countries’ citizens are individually making better choices, it’s that… they don’t live in America.

Something’s just totally fucked about our culture when it comes to food and activity. A few can overcome it, but relying on individual willpower to get us out of this mess is clearly never going to work.

That leaves figuring out what’s wrong with our culture and fixing that (hard, probably multiple generations to achieve) or drugs (available now, doesn’t require coordination to achieve, people who need it can just go get it)

nah. "what's wrong with our culture" isn't hard to figure out -- sedentary lifestyles, car centric culture that preempts biking, walking and activity, and lots of cheap, fatty foods. we're seeing that happen in other countries, too; the US just got there first.

rates of diabetes and obesity are getting pretty high in other countries, too. the UK is pretty fat, and much of Europe is heading that direction. behind the US, but it's trending that way.

The middle east is fat as fuck, but is mitigated by overall poverty and high temperatures -- life in a sauna helps drop weight.

China has seen a surge diabetes, as has several other Asian countries.

Well, once we ID the problem there’s still the “fix it” part. The fact that so much of the world is heading the wrong way on this is not reassuring that we have any realistic hope of doing that.

possible, but uncomfortable -- nailed it. life is not supposed to be 100% comfortable. traditional spiritual practices bake in periods of discomfort for a reason.

Remember, this is the country that found wearing masks in public for public safety was too onerous a burden and having to inconvenience yourself to help others was met with anger and violence.

We can philosophize about what life is suppose to be, but at the end of the day most people do not want to be uncomfortable and will consistently make decisions that reduce their discomfort.

the ability to withstand temporary discomfort for a higher end is trainable. most people do not know any better, and telling them to not even try is rather not charitable.

I'm not saying we should avoid discomfort, but we already encourage lots of forms of discomfort that encourage obesity, such as stress, and discourage the healthy sorts of discomfort like walking to places.

Baloney. I've been skinny (too skinny for my preference) my whole life. While I used to get a lot more exercise in my youth, I'm (again, unfortunately for my preference) quite sedentary these days.

And for me to stay skinny, I never have to think about my food intake. I don't diet, I simply never get that hungry. I'm not saying this as some sort of weird internet brag, it's the opposite in fact. I fully recognize that my genetics (and also possibly my childhood upbringing) basically have full control over my weight level and hunger level. This idea that we all should be some sort of Zen ascetics to maintain our weight is horse shit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com