That would still only be 2% of women and 0.2% of men, whereas the obesity rate in the UK is around 28%.
Obesity is not a choice
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That would still only be 2% of women and 0.2% of men, whereas the obesity rate in the UK is around 28%.
Soldato
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That you didn't have a tantrum with them doesn't imply that they made the assumption you weren't talking about losing weight when reading that particular post.
No, I'm just pointing out that you didn't weigh yourself so you don't know. People carry/accumulate their fat differently and you can't necessarily target where it will be lost. I suspect if you had weighed yourself after sticking to a very low calorie diet for over a month then you would have lost weight... some of that may be muscle (especially if you don't exercise/didn't have much protein etc..) some of it would have been fat too. Thats all I'm pointing out, that it is rather improbably that you "lost nothing". I did point this out clearly, I didn't accuse you of lying - maybe you should pay attention to what has been said instead of just venting or replying as though I've said something else.
I think we've pretty much resolved the issue now - the issue is simply that you're likely mistaken and you didn't actually weigh yourself so don't know - you've just made a claim that doesn't add up and is at best based on some subjective perception that you've lost nothing because your waist line was similar-ish, thats all
Don't mean to be pedantic, but smoking is banned in many scenarios and situations, (under 18, in public places, in the workplace, etc) and the government has tabled a plan to eradicate smoking completely by 2030, something I fully support.
Food is a more complex problem, because we actually need food, we need a food industry, we can't ban - nor should we ban, the food industry. Unlike the tobacco industry, which I'd to see razed to the ground tomorrow.
Legislation against the food industry will mostly only be problematic because of money, and very little else.
The best way to legislate, is basically to reduce the amount of bad food, because there's an imbalance in food availability. It would mean forcing the closures of fast food outlets, placing restrictions on the amount of those outlets that exist and where they can exist. Followed by forcing supermarkets to redistribute the types and amounts of foods that they sell. Mostly because the current contents of a modern supermarket are a joke. And a whole host of other measures, all of which will impact the bottom line of the food industry's junk food sector (As it should)
The food industry has gotten away with producing borderline poison, whilst absolving itself of responsibility at every turn, and it can only go on until a certain point - my prediction would be roughly another 10 years, at that point we'll start to see large-scale blanket bans on certain products.
Well you have two competing forces, the food industry hijacking the biology or people (indeed children), vs the willpower of people to resist it. And it's a weird fact, that many decades ago, nobody needed personal responsibility to stay a healthy weight, nobody had to watch what they ate, nobody had to worry about how many calories they were consuming, because they weren't being lambasted by an enormous conglomerate of companies hellbent on making money at any cost. There was no obesity (the word was largely unknown) type-2 diabetes existed mostly in alcoholics, and everybody was skinny.
The notion, that you need to have a sense of ironclad personal responsibility, just to stay a healthy weight is actually insane, when you think it through, because for 99.9% of human history, it simply wasn't a problem.
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No one said you'd be a stick figure after a month - I mean that might be the other issue with not bothering to weigh yourself - unrealistic expectations re: how you should look after one month of this.
No, I didn't say that - though presumably you didn't accumulate it all within a month? Also if your waistline has massively expanded then it is probably still going to be "big" after a month too.
There are pretty reasonable explanations for what you've claimed so far and so far it doesn't seem like there is any reason to believe you "lost nothing" when following a <1000 calorie diet for over a month. I don't know if you've ever heard the term "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? Not even bothering to weigh yourself and still making a claim like that is rather easy to dismiss as it is just plain nonsense.
This happens everywhere now, people base opinions on headlines and in the social media age this is basically what most people read and then skip the actual article.
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You don't have to go too far back (indeed just to my parents generation) to find that people routinely did not have enough food to eat every day. Or put another way, they often went to bed hungry.
Without doubt we have a lot of as you say "borderline poison" on the market. No disagreement. But we also have it in quantities that were unheard of no so long ago.
So I still very much believe that personal responsibility plays a part. Our willpower is being tested today whereas in previous generations you were lucky if you had enough food that willpower was the only factor.
e: @ttaskmaster As a humourous aside, last night I ate a tin of water chestnuts with a BBE of 2015. I couldn't bring myself to throw them away
I did get a second opinion first, tho...
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Soldato
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Come on then, Daddy, beat me harder. You seem to enjoy it so much.....
I don't agree that people choose to be obese, I don't think any healthy minded person says 'I'm going to try and gain 5 stone this month'
However, I would agree that people are making bad choices regarding nutrition, and it's affecting a majority of people, in particular everybody. Young, old, male, female - the majority of people are all falling foul of the same problem - poor nutritional choices, which lead to overweight/obese people.
The question is why, what's the driving force behind those decisions.
Because some people just aren't motivated to keep themselves in shape. That doesn't mean that the onus isn't on the individual to do so though. Just because someone fails at their responsibility doesn't mean that it's not their responsibility.
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Motivation, life priorities, lazyness, greediness etc
This sentence annoyed me:
"People who live in deprived areas often experience high levels of stress, including major life challenges and trauma, often their neighbourhoods offer few opportunities and incentives for physical activity and options for accessing affordable healthy food are limited."
I am sorry, but none of those are a valid excuse for being obese. In fact they are just factually incorrect.
Limited access to affordable healthy food? Are they making out that obese people don't live anywhere near a supermarket or a green grocer?
limited opportunities for physical activity? Again, there are a multitude of exercises you can do that are completely free (just going running for instance).
Major life challenges and trauma? Again, not really a valid excuse. I'm sure there are plenty of fit and healthy people who have had their fair share of challenges and trauma.
One thing i will give credence to is upbringing. If as a child, you were overfed and not taught how to eat correctly etc then that could have course contribute. As a child, you often wont have a choice as to what you eat/when you are fed etc. However, the concept of not eating too much and the basics principle of physics/conservation of energy that explains why the body gets fat/loses weight is very simple and easy to learn. I think therefore, the vast majority of people, as an adult, have the opportunity to do something about it.
If you are obese, you are simply eating too much (in 99.9% of cases).
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But that's incorrect, firstly in western countries it's not some people - it's most people, because around 65%+ of adults are overweight.
Secondly, if the individual is to blame, how do you explain the Italian obesity epidemic?
Italians have always been healthy, the Mediterranean diet has been the benchmark for a healthy diet, yet why have scores of Italians suddenly started becoming obese in the last 10 years?
What measurable thing has changed, which has caused this decline in the health of Italians?
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And even those that do put in the effort can miscalculate, and can end up not losing any weight on what they believe to be calorie deficit diets!