Meanwhile there is a maze of contradictory claims about what one should do/avoid.
...hard to know who/what to trust. I'm at the stage where I'm all fk it I'll just yolo this based on intuition even though I have no credible nutritional knowledge. Said intuition currently says ultra processed foods are the issue. So I cook more stuff from scratch...if I'm wrong it'll be fine
Of course, both those things tended to contribute to either hunger management or calorie burn, but I'm sure that's not what you meant!
Despite what news headlines may say, the means of maintaining a healthy weight are no mystery, nor are the general contours of a healthy lifestyle:
- Eat a number of calories at your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) for maintenance, or 500-750 calories below that if you need to lose weight.
- Get regular exercise, both cardiovascular and resistance-bearing.
- Get sufficient sleep.
- Don’t smoke, and don’t drink (or limit alcoholic drinks to special occasions).
- Drink plenty of water for hydration, and avoid sugar water (soda, etc.)
- Eat roughly 1 gram of lean protein for every pound of your ideal body weight.
- Eat a variety of vegetables, every day.
- Limit refined carbohydrates, and prefer fibrous, whole grains. (Eg, steel cut oats >> pancakes).
- Manage and reduce your stress, or recruit the help of a therapist if you don’t know how.
- Make time to do things you find meaningful and joyful.
How exactly does that explain why obesity rates skyrocketed between 1990 and 2022, as mentioned by the article?
As was the submitted article.
> my comment was on the individual level
Do you think those two are somehow unrelated?
Also, aside from the last two items (the last one being the most questionable inclusion), your healthy lifestyle list, while not technically wrong, has nothing specifically to do with emotions.
Maybe there's an underlying chemical imbalance, perhaps not; they typically leave that to those that specialized in psychiatry; physicians that completed not just a medical degree but also a degree in clinical psychiatry.
There aren't enough psychiatrists to handle over a billion evals, if that were even the problem, which is extremely dubious.
You've got one thing right. Over a billion people are now obese, a rate that has skyrocketed over the past 30 years. Whether physicians ever refer people for psych evaluations is irrelevant. My point is simple: I don't think it's plausible that the obesity epidemic is an "emotional problem". Beyond that, we've just fallen into sniping in a pointless way, which I have no wish to continue.
The thing about physicians is, if global amoral food conglomerates are targeting young people with unhealthy products, for example, there's little or nothing an individual physician can do about that. They can offer advice to an individual patient, but they can't really treat a societal problem. So if you're looking at it only from the perspective of an individual physician, you're missing the forest for the trees.
It would be like looking at cigarette smoking as an "emotional problem" while completely ignoring the role of the cigarette manufacturers in producing, marketing, and selling a product that they know is both addictive and deadly. Of course your physician would say don't smoke. (Ironically, some physicians smoke too.) It's no mystery that smoking is unhealthy. But it would be absurd to refer a smoker for a psych evaluation as if they were mentally ill. That's not the reason people are smoking.
That was actually the point, though I didn’t state it well. The point is that most people know what a healthy lifestyle entails, and what’s standing between them and that lifestyle is feelings.
Maybe the parent is right and we have a mental health crisis, one the medical establishment has failed to cure. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the obesity crisis is rooted in a social problem. Maybe the cure for obesity is a stable family, friends and some fresh air, and modern society with its endless drugs and medical science has failed them.
To the second point, a lot of people from my culture still eat the same portions of food that their ancestors did, while living in a very different lifestyle in the present day. Eating a whole plate of rice as part of a meal is necessary if you're a laborer who's farming or fishing all day, but you'll pack on weight if you eat the same diet as an office worker.
GDP per capita in China in 1990 was $320 A YEAR.
GDP per capita in India in 1990 was $360 A YEAR.
Then you get people posting on the internet about how bad things are economically, on a device that costs 5 years of labor of the average Chinese person in 1990. As if the modern world is just a given and has always been this way.
That would imply that humanities emotions now are substantially different than say 50 years ago.
That feels incredibly shaky as a theory...
It’s a difficult thing to ever really quantize, but I’m comfortable with the notion that different experiences lead us to different behaviors. How much that broad phenomenon can explain the rise of obesity worldwide I do not know.
I think your theory here is too stuck on what is termed “morbidly” obese, rather than the wider population being discussed.
Being obese is now fairly normal in many countries, particularly the US, to the point that many people don’t even think of themselves/others who are obese that way, until they consult a bmi chart or go to their doctor.
Being overweight or obese is the default condition in America, and you have to actively design your lifestyle and habits in order to not fall in that category. It is an uphill battle the whole time, and has little to do with emotional issues, at least not specifically.
Don’t be an asshole. I’m not “looking down on people” or being “morally superior”. I am personally someone who has trouble with my weight and have personal experience with the fact that the deck is stacked against me.
I don’t have an “emotional problem” things literally just creeped up on me from a lack of time to cook and an office job that led me to being sedentary.
My point was that unless you are consciously thinking about it you will end up like the default of everyone else, because our environment is always nudging us in one direction. In the past this wasn’t the case, we were more active in our jobs and built environments, and had very different foods, you didnt have to actively fight against your environment.
In the past, it might’ve been easier for this aspect of one’s health to go on “autopilot”. And now, you’re right: you do need to be actively mindful of your lifestyle and choices in order to manage your weight.
Why do we allow people to buy and sell addictive fast food?
Living life perfectly is not a solution to the obesity epidemic.