Obesity is not a choice

People just don't have the patience and don't like the hard work/effort to loose a significant amount of weight. I think the difference between people is their satiety level. I can eat and eat and eat, if I get anywhere near to starting feeling full I know I have eaten too much and I will put on weight if I do that regularly. Now my GF eat as much as she can, but she naturally has a small appetite so despite never really watching what she eats, she does not put no weight. I'm not using that as an excuse,we are all adults and should be able to moderate what we eat.
 
If people want to be fat, that's up to them. But I don't want my hard earned salary going towards the health care of those unwilling to make a change.

The NHS should provide guidance, counselling and perhaps a gastric band for those who have shown a will to change their lifestyle. But those who don't? I'm fine with their paying out of their own pocket or else letting nature reclaiming them.
 
FoxEye said:
The government would have to legislate and there would be a whole heap of lawsuits if they tried.

But it would take legislation to make the kind of changes you refer to. Most of our food production is undertaken by companies with no morals whatsoever.

A case in point. Amusingly, Cadbury recently introduced a 30% less sugar bar, but somehow managed to keep the number calories almost exactly the same (despite being ~20% smaller in size as well). The 30% less sugar was not there to make the product more healthy. It was a gimmick to sell the idea of a healthier bar, despite being nothing of the sort.

They replaced some of the sugar with that highly processed corn syrup they seem to love in the US. The result? A lower sugar but arguably less healthy bar.

https://fitshit.in/dairy-milk-low-sugar/

We all know this, but most food production in the UK is 100% about profit, and totally amoral.

You'd be looking at the biggest shake-up of the industry in history if you wanted things to change in any significant way.
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And a shake-up of the industry is what we need, because without it - the problem is going to get worse and worse, because that's what problems do - they get worse if you don't fix the root cause.

Legislation is what we need, there's no other way. You cannot educate, tax or exercise yourself out of an obesity epidemic as large as this, and expect the problem to go away, it won't. Legislation is the only way.

And this is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in, we both agree that the food industry behave in a totally amoral way, but for some reason it seems unacceptable to expect them to moderate their behaviour. For some insane reason, reading the responses in this thread - the default position is 'Fatties gonna fat' or 'if they wreck themselves, I shouldn't have to pay for it'. Even though it's leading to an epidemic of sickness and metabolic disease and we're sending children off for bariatric surgery.

And that's without reminding people (most of whom know nothing about the actual problem itself) that obesity is mostly a problem that starts in childhood. Because it's children who take the brunt of the food industry's targeted advertising campaigns, from a very early age and aren't able to resist it as easily as adults, because children are more impressionable and can be led more easily.

Unfortunately, as is the case in the US, and is the case with the NRA, the food industry have very deep pockets and have 'purchased' many of the politicians, and researchers, so getting things to change which might hurt the pockets of the food industry will be very hard indeed. Combine that with the situation with modern government incompetence, where everything they touch turns to excrement in their fingers, and there's not much hope really.
 
ttaskmaster said:
Not at all. I've never claimed otherwise and quite specifically never mentioned weight, for reasons already given. Doesn't change what I've said.
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ttaskmaster said:
Tefal said:
I didn't eat (except for 40g protein in a shake each day with no carbs) for a week to see what happened lost about 3lb iirc.
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I spent over a month, during which I ate no more than 350kcal and drank between 300 and 400kcal, and lost nothing.
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Tefal "lost 3lb"

in reply

you "lost nothing"

Instead of ranting and throwing in angry comments perhaps you could try to address the points raised - what were you referring to here? This was in a post where multiple people were talking about losing weight.

I'm commenting on the subject of the thread, obesity. You've made a claim that makes no sense and rather than explain or clarify you just get angry and start ranting. Do you want to try again?
 
ttaskmaster said:
Plenty of others followed this same reasoning, without bitching assersions of disingenuity, error, shifting goalposts and all your other ********. So what's your ******* problem this time?
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I think you need to calm down a bit tbh..

The problem is the dubious claims around this topic - you claimed a rather low calorie diet over a month and claimed to have not lost anything, this was in direct reply to posts talking about losing weight.

If you weren't talking about losing weight then you weren't exactly very clear nor do you seemingly have much basis to make the claim in the first place. The people you were objecting to were making a fairly straight forward point - for example Tefal here:

Tefal said:
I didn't eat (except for 40g protein in a shake each day with no carbs) for a week to see what happened lost about 3lb iirc. Your body can't just make circa 1500kcal of energy out of thin air when you stop eating, you don't have some emergency back up "starvation mode" fusion reactor up your arse :p
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To then quote him and claim some low calorie diet and assert you "lost nothing" is just not realistic, you got upset because you thought I was accusing you of lying, I didn't actually do that but pointed out there are other reasons for the assertion being incorrect... now it seems that you apparently weren't talking about weight, didn't weigh yourself anyway and because you could fit into the same trousers then you lost nothing? It is just a rather dubious claim to make in really to the posts you quoted and deserved to be called out. No need to get all worked up about it, next time try to offer some clarification instead of throwing the toys out of the pram.
 
To be fair, the only way I've ever heard for someone to not lose, or gain weight when following a calorie restricted diet, are people who suffer from damage to the hypothalamus, normally hypothalamic tumors. But it's an insanely rare side effect, and also results in other symptoms, because the body's energy balance is thrown into chaos. But patients can become morbidly obese - even with severe caloric restriction, which is pretty interesting, but it's rare as hell.

There's also some evidence that type-2 diabetics who receive insulin can gain weight, because of how insulin is the fat-storage hormone, even when not eating excessive calories. But the studies are difficult to trust due to how most of the data is self reported, but it is interesting, because weight gain is almost an entirely hormonal process.

Aside from that, it's almost unheard of for a normal healthy person to not lose weight when following any diet that restricts calories.
 
JBuk said:
It’s possible that some people just don’t have the willpower to overcome their cravings , it’s so hard to resist eating when you’re body is telling you it needs food . It takes a strong mind to overcome the cravings. In my own experience my cravings are really bad when I’ve got in the habit of eating too much sugar, this snowballs and leads to me gradually putting on weight which in turn causes me to crave and eat even more. I’m lucky in that I can recognise this and do something about it before it gets too far out of hand , I would guess a lot of people are not so lucky and can’t overcome their desire to eat.
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Completely this.
I think people struggle to admit 'I haven't got the willpower'. But not everyone is the same. I find it quite easy not to eat generally. But most people aren't like that.

But saying its down to willpower is some sort of taboo. But it's better than blaming something else
 
Screeeech said:
And a shake-up of the industry is what we need, because without it - the problem is going to get worse and worse, because that's what problems do - they get worse if you don't fix the root cause.

Legislation is what we need, there's no other way. You cannot educate, tax or exercise yourself out of an obesity epidemic as large as this, and expect the problem to go away, it won't. Legislation is the only way.

And this is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in, we both agree that the food industry behave in a totally amoral way, but for some reason it seems unacceptable to expect them to moderate their behaviour. For some insane reason, reading the responses in this thread - the default position is 'Fatties gonna fat' or 'if they wreck themselves, I shouldn't have to pay for it'. Even though it's leading to an epidemic of sickness and metabolic disease and we're sending children off for bariatric surgery.

And that's without reminding people (most of whom know nothing about the actual problem itself) that obesity is mostly a problem that starts in childhood. Because it's children who take the brunt of the food industry's targeted advertising campaigns, from a very early age and aren't able to resist it as easily as adults, because children are more impressionable and can be led more easily.

Unfortunately, as is the case in the US, and is the case with the NRA, the food industry have very deep pockets and have 'purchased' many of the politicians, and researchers, so getting things to change which might hurt the pockets of the food industry will be very hard indeed. Combine that with the situation with modern government incompetence, where everything they touch turns to excrement in their fingers, and there's not much hope really.
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Well look at the situation with cigarettes. We probably both agree they are bad for you.

Yet they are not banned, and you can quite legally smoke yourself to an early death if you so desire.

There are also plenty of examples of things which are banned, which simply move underground. Although the idea of a cupcake smuggling ring does tickle me.

We have largely educated people to the dangers of smoking, without banning it. We've also taxed it up the wazoo, which I fully support.

Food is a much more complex problem, I fear. For one there are likely to be lots of unintended consequences to legislation. Say you ban sugar or put a cap on it. Next thing you know, the market is flooded with products using Aspartame or corn syrup. Neither of which are all that great either.

The fact that I agree food producers are largely amoral does not mean that it should follow that the answer must be to take away personal responsibility.
 
Companies are obliged to try and maximise profits for better shareholder dividends. This trumps any other consideration, be it moral, ethical, legal, or otherwise. This discussion isn't completely separate from the Greta T/enviro thread. Food is grown in unsustainable ways (machinery, monoculture, deforestation, fertilisers, etc.) to keep prices down and that food is overprocessed for convenience, shelf-life, taste, etc. with a knock-on effect of higher obesity rates.
 
Mason- said:
It's just fundamentally rubbish too.

The country moves away from having a majority of 'manual workers', has technology and automation that means we physically have to do less, and has cheap readily available highly calorific food everywhere.

And you're telling me this has nothing to do with it, and instead it's just a psychological condition that just so happens to have come into existence as the aforementioned changes to society occurred? Poppycock.

It's really this simple: we move less because we don't need to, and we eat more because it's easy to do so. The result is obvious.

I don't doubt that telling a fat person in denial that they're fat makes them feel bad about themselves, and that eating something makes them feel better for a brief period of time. But honestly they should, it's not healthy. I'm overweight, I acknowledge it's no-ones fault but my own, I would rather play piano than go to the gym, a lasagne is nicer than a salad, I sat in a car for 3 hours a day and then a desk for another 8. I'm under no illusion that this is a mental condition or that it's not down to a lack of willpower. I'm doing something about it because I'm worried about my health. I go to the gym, I try to eat better, I'm losing weight. It's that simple.
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Excuses..
 
FoxEye said:
Food is a much more complex problem, I fear. For one there are likely to be lots of unintended consequences to legislation. Say you ban sugar or put a cap on it. Next thing you know, the market is flooded with products using Aspartame or corn syrup. Neither of which are all that great either..
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If they make the legislation correctly, then they wouldn't be able to hide behind using any version of glucose/sucrose/dextrose/etc-ose simple sugar family, so they couldn't you swap out for HFCS.

Companies might then be forced to find ways to use alternative sweeteners like stevia, erythritol, allulose, monkfruit, or even, shock-horror, synthetic ones like sucralose/aspartame which are all way-better/less-bad for most people than sugar.

Due to the sugar industry being so big and profit-generating, the healthier/less-bad sweetener options are priced so much higher. Kill the sugar industry, replace it the alternatives, and the price will come down. Probably never as cheap as sugar, but then that also means junky processed foods won't be dirt-cheap.

Companies rarely make changes unless if will generate profit for them, or they are forced to by the government. They will milk the status quo for as long as possible.
 
I have hyperthyroidism and it's a nightmare to keep weight off, literally have to starve myself sometimes in order not to balloon up. I can see quite easily how people in a similar situation end up putting weight on drastically.
 
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