The "Truth" About Obesity

[dcarch]

I don’t know if I am the only one who has this experience.

I am lucky that body weight is not an issue all my life. I enjoy eating and never exercise.

I don’t eat breakfast, just the lack of time in the mornings.

One day last week, no breakfast, skipped lunch because meetings, and 8:00 in the evening, I got to the Grand Central train station to take the train home. I was famished.

Those of you in NYC know in Grand Central terminal it is food everywhere. I don’t know how many bakeries there are, a huge food court with international foods, restaurants, The Oyster Bar, the high end food store, cheese shops, wine shops, etc., etc.

I missed the train and the next train was more than half an hour away. So I walked around the station and browsed all the food places.

Obviously, I was very much drawn to all the amazing array of plentiful-ness of gorgeous, mouthwatering displays, but interestingly I had no compulsion to buy. I just walked around, perused, and smelled. Yes, by that time, the hunger in me was unbearable.

I got home just before 10:00 and made a big dinner.

The fact that I had no compulsion to buy, despite intense hunger in front of all the foods was not because of good self-control, there was nothing to control. The desire to buy was not there.

I believe over eating can cause obesity, but not necessarily, and I am not sure the lack of self-control is the main reason why obese people is driven to eat. They don’t deserve to be ridiculed. IMHO.

dcarch

[Simon_S]

I am obese (in that my BMI is over 30, and it ain't muscle!) and speaking entirely for myself, I've learned that:

1) I lose weight when I eat better and get more exercise.

2) Compared to many of my friends and colleagues, I seem to have to try MUCH harder to keep weight off. By that I mean that for a given amount of food intake (both "good" food and "naughty" food) I'll put on weight much quicker than similarly sedentary friends.

It seems clear to me that if I want to get to normal healthy weight levels, I'll have to sacrifice more than many of my peers. While others can get away with a certain amount of bad eating, drinking, whatever, I don't seem to be able to get away with it at all. This has implications for my social life, and thusfar any significant weightloss has only been achieved by saying no to virtually everything. I appreciate that this can be done, but I'm reluctant to live that way. I've spent 10 years trying to find a balance, but I haven't found it yet.

So I can accept that the issue really IS simple: if I ate properly and exercised far more, I wouldn't be obese. This is "fact". But it's not easy.

[rotuts]

you absorb ALL the protein, you do not eliminate it.

what done with it after absorbtion is a different matter

[weinoo]

I am obese (in that my BMI is over 30, and it ain't muscle!) and speaking entirely for myself, I've learned that:

1) I lose weight when I eat better and get more exercise.

2) Compared to many of my friends and colleagues, I seem to have to try MUCH harder to keep weight off. By that I mean that for a given amount of food intake (both "good" food and "naughty" food) I'll put on weight much quicker than similarly sedentary friends.

It seems clear to me that if I want to get to normal healthy weight levels, I'll have to sacrifice more than many of my peers. While others can get away with a certain amount of bad eating, drinking, whatever, I don't seem to be able to get away with it at all. This has implications for my social life, and thusfar any significant weightloss has only been achieved by saying no to virtually everything. I appreciate that this can be done, but I'm reluctant to live that way. I've spent 10 years trying to find a balance, but I haven't found it yet.

So I can accept that the issue really IS simple: if I ate properly and exercised far more, I wouldn't be obese. This is "fact". But it's not easy.

Your personal evidence and struggle is indeed is what I learned from the article. And also the article is trying to point out that society, taken as a whole, should not be looking at the problems clinically obese people have with losing weight and then keeping that weight off as simply as those people not having the willpower to do what's in their best interest, but the fact that those people have a greater struggle due to what's going on inside their bodies physically. In other words, it's not all in your head.

[Mjx]

you absorb ALL the protein, you do not eliminate it.

what done with it after absorbtion is a different matter

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1072752/

The only macronutrient to be absorbed entirely is carbohydrate; protein is the most poorly absorbed, and its absorption would be further reduced in normal eating, because most people don't chew that thoroughly.

[Darienne]

Then there is that wonderful fact that men lose weight more quickly than do women. Unfair. Unfair.

My DH was a fat kid and this is back in the 40s and 50s when there was one fat kid per school it seemed. It has been a life long battle for him and one that he has won. But constant diligence and rigid self-control has always been there.

I, on the other hand, have neither constant diligence nor rigid self-control and am caught in that difficult situation so well described by Simon_S. I can take it off...but I can't keep it off and each decade sees my "set-weight", or whatever you call the weight at which you can eat pretty well and NOT gain any more dramatically, up by 5 pounds.

Right now I am doing fine...but for how long? And it's all further complicated now by Spinal Stenosis which means less pain with less weight but difficulty in walking or standing sometimes for any length of time. Sometimes in 'remission', sometimes so bad that I don't want to think about it.

Just my story.

[mm84321]

Your personal evidence and struggle is indeed is what I learned from the article. And also the article is trying to point out that society, taken as a whole, should not be looking at the problems clinically obese people have with losing weight and then keeping that weight off as simply as those people not having the willpower to do what's in their best interest, but the fact that those people have a greater struggle due to what's going on inside their bodies physically. In other words, it's not all in your head.

I'd also add psychologically. And the way our psychology impacts our physiology plays a large role, as well. The burgeoning field of psychoneuroimunnology helps to explain this, not just in the role it plays in our being overweight, but also the effect our minds, and stressors, have on disease. More of it starts in your head than you might think. It seems that, finally, Western science is making the mind/body connection of ancient Eastern medicine that we foolishly chose to sever long ago. Though, It's too bad we needed more science to figure out what was already known. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Doctor Robert Sapolsky is a great book for this.

[Toliver]

...also the article is trying to point out that society, taken as a whole, should not be looking at the problems clinically obese people have with losing weight and then keeping that weight off as simply as those people not having the willpower to do what's in their best interest, but the fact that those people have a greater struggle due to what's going on inside their bodies physically. In other words, it's not all in your head.

I concur. I also got this as the main point of the article...that more is going on here than lack of willpower or poor food choices; That we're fighting our own biological evolution. Understanding what is going on inside of us should be the first step towards figuring out how to circumvent it/prevent it from happening.

[Blether]

Nice timing, though it's not prescriptive if your life experience hasn't given you a good familiarity with the Japanese diet - What Americans don't understand about weight loss.

[Simon_S]

Nice timing, though it's not prescriptive if your life experience hasn't given you a good familiarity with the Japanese diet - What Americans don't understand about weight loss.

I enjoyed that article (without knowing much about the Japanese diet). Thank you.

[BeeZee]

I enjoyed the article, as well.

I'm sure I've read that the reason that so many more people are becoming overweight in Asia is the invasion of Western fast-food restaurants. Their natural diet is healthy and makes sense (well-balanced).

[JAZ]

I must have read a different article -- the one I read was all about a vain, shallow woman who wants to be thin because men don't like chubby girls.

[Paul Kierstead]

Well, its going there, then.

[Snadra]

I must have read a different article -- the one I read was all about a vain, shallow woman who wants to be thin because men don't like chubby girls.

We must have read the same article!

Outside of arithmetic I am always leery of the simple and obvious. Until the 80s it was 'obvious' that ulcers were caused by stress and diet, and the 'simple' solution was to cut them out in major surgery. My father-in-law has endured the side effects and complications of that simple solution for some 40 years now. I am not suggesting that there is an obesity bacterium working its way through the populations of the western world, transmitted by fried chicken and kebabs, but I have a hard time believing there is a simple and obvious here: if there was the problem wouldn't be so...big.