Obesity

200sols said:
A calorie is just a unit of energy.
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But total energy alone, does not dictate the effect on the human body, or how it drives human behaviour.
It is the after-effects of having nutritionally poor calories that lead to lack of energy, bloody sugar spikes, over-eating, putting on weight, diabetes etc.

Your body stores fat due to insulin responses. It is a evolutionary thing, whereby if we came across a bounty of sweet fruit or beehive full of honey, it tells the body to store fat for later times when we might need it.
This is just 1 of many reasons why X number of calories of sugary foods will have a different effect on you as the same number of calories from say protein and veg.
 
BMI is a flawed measurement. We've seen real world examples of it's flaws, yet the government/NHS carry on like they didn't see it.

I know you guys will challenge me, so here is some links;

The unethical use of BMI in contemporary general practice - PMC

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

www.hsph.harvard.edu

BMI a poor metric for measuring people’s health, say experts | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Clinicians should pull back on the widespread use of body mass index (BMI) as a metric for assessing people’s health because it can lead to patient distrust and delayed care, say some health experts.
www.hsph.harvard.edu www.hsph.harvard.edu

www.medscape.com

BMI Is a Flawed Measure of Obesity. What Are Alternatives?

BMI is the go-to obesity metric, but there is increasing acknowledgment that it's an imperfect measure and can differ with ethnicity, sex, and body frame; hence, the growing chorus for alternatives.
www.medscape.com www.medscape.com

Real world examples;

www.chroniclelive.co.uk

Shiremoor mum slams council after daughter, five, classed as 'overweight'

The fit and active five-year-old spends hours swimming, dancing and cycling to school each week but council health bosses have told her parents she is overweight
www.chroniclelive.co.uk www.chroniclelive.co.uk

www.thesun.co.uk

My slim lad, 5, was fat-shamed as obese by NHS in ‘cold letter’ - I'm fuming

A FUMING mum told how her son, five, was fat-shamed by the NHS after receiving a letter telling her he was OBESE. Horrified Cheryl Beattie, from Glasgow, received the letter about young son Blair, …
www.thesun.co.uk www.thesun.co.uk

Those kids aren't fat/overweight.
 
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The article didn't surprise me to be honest, I'm definitely noticing people are getting larger and larger.
Part of the problem I think, as others have mentioned, is the easy availability of super processed food and easy meals, just take a walk through your local supermarket and the amount of processed foods is staggering, a lot of which doesn't require much effort to prepare if any.
We are also living in a society where a lot of families work full time, then have the commute back and forth, then by the time they get home and settled they might find it too tiresome to cook something, whereas the lure of a microwaveable meal will take minutes to cook.

That said, even if you cook from scratch its not that simple.
Start of the year I decided to lose weight as I was 81kg and as a person quite short my BMI was falling into the obese range, however I couldn't figure out why I was getting larger when I was cooking all meals from scratch and didn't snack on crisps etc.
When I started to actually look at the amount of calories and what I was eating it became apparent that I was simply eating too much and too often eating foods with lots of carbs and cheese (I blame the wife for getting me a pizza oven!) :).
So, I spent some time learning about nutrition (NHS has some great advice on reading labels/nutritional information), learnt more detail about calories (now have a spreadsheet on the fridge listing calories per 100g) and adjusted how I shop and what I put on my plate.
In short, I've cut carbs significantly, eat more salad and veg, walk more and aim for 1700 calories a day.
As a result I've lost 6kgs already and thats without going to the gym!
I no longer snore, I sleep better, I have more energy and my mood has improved too.
I always thought I led a healthy lifestyle but its really opened my eyes to what eating healthy/being healthy means.
 
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Orangeade said:
I think lots of the problem ironically comes from the "gym" culture. Not as in healthy functional strength that Aristole says is desirable to have, but 15 years of cheap film/media which shows the average man as a hulking heman which leads to a general consensus of bigger being better even if its not gym.
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I don't know about anyone else, but that makes no sense to me?

Most of the obesity problem is because people see very muscular people on TV and film, so they think they can just overeat to achieve a similar size/shape result? I mean, there may be a few delusional people who believe that, but I don't think that's the main issue here.
 
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Gixer said:
Well done. Walking or cycling to work if possible is a great way to get some exercise in with minimising lost free time as much as possible. I cycle 6 miles each way to work. Whilst my journey to work is 10mins slowed than in a car on the way home on most days the journey is quicker on the bike. You're not only doing yourself a favour either. That length journey isn't great for cars. You're showing it much more mechanical sympathy leaving it parked up at home :D
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That's exactly why I do it.

1 - Saves wear and tear on the car
2 - Saves petrol/money
3 - Exercise
4 - Gives me time to listen to podcasts

I dislike running for several reasons, some silly ones like self conscious from people watching my running looking like a fat dude who runs lol, so I used to run after it got dark. In the winter it was dangerous sometimes when there is ice on the road. The paths are also isn't all level and running down gradient is not good for the knees. Plus of course, I really do not like running. I even did the couch to 5k app, twice.
 
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1kg of fat contains roughly the same energy as 1kg coal.
I'm sure the average fat person could spare ~10kg from the love handles etc - That's a huge amount of non fossil fuel energy we are leaving on the table.

The point when it's morally justified on a climate change basis to harvest excess fat via forced liposuction can't be far off?
 
malachi said:
When I was younger, a sign of poverty is someone who was skinny and underweight. Now a sign of poverty is someone who is overweight. Crazy how times have changed.

When I lived in the UK, every few shops you see were the £2 chicken and chips shops.

I see kids walking around looking like Michelin Man, women are getting bigger every year. Yet we have so many 24/7 gyms around the country :confused:

People are that fat, lazy and society just accept it now as normal.
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I guess it's the pareto principle of gym vs diet. Hard to gym away excessively calories. A 40 min gym session cannot undo a 4000 calorie diet!
 
Bring back proper home economics lessons in schools. I did Food Technology as part of my Design GCSE and it was less cooking and more how how body digests food (that should be for biology lessons).

Also introduce a cap for councils for having a certain amount of retail units as takeaways.

I know I am about 4 stone heavier than I would like to be. Some its due to medication and some due to my love of food and alcohol.
 
Its not surprising really. You could never leave your house these days, what with take away apps/shopping deliveries ect. I've been wfh home since September and i go to the gym in my lunch hour and i've cut right down on takeaways.

I used to have 2-3 a week but now if I fancy one/can't be bothered to cook I have a ready meal instead. I know they aren't healthy but calorie wise there about 4-500 which is a lot less than kebab/curry/chinese/mcdonalds.
 
I think the younger generations are more conscious of their weight and are more minded to go to the gym and exercise etc. than I ever was at their age.

Probably due to constant pressure to look good on social media but ho hum.
 
Ayahuasca said:
I don't know about anyone else, but that makes no sense to me?

The majority of the obesity problem is because people see very muscular people on TV and film so they think they can just overeat to achieve the same results? I mean, there may be a few delusional people who believe that, but I don't think that's the main issue here.
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I don't often make sense to be honest. I didn't mean the majority and was actually skewing a bit more towards men, but I think being "bigger" is seen as better even if its not all muscle. I can compare a picture of myself wearing a suit at closer to 120kg than 100kg and I look radically different (I could easily see how some could say better) than slimmer me wearing a suit. I think it's been normalised quite a bit.
 
cheesefest said:
Bring back proper home economics lessons in schools. I did Food Technology as part of my Design GCSE and it was less cooking and more how how body digests food (that should be for biology lessons).

Also introduce a cap for councils for having a certain amount of retail units as takeaways.

I know I am about 4 stone heavier than I would like to be. Some its due to medication and some due to my love of food and alcohol.
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So all that education hasn't really worked?

If you're 4 stone heavier than where you want to be, you're probably considered obese.

McGray said:
The majority of female adults seem to be mahoosive these days. Yuk.
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Didn't expect to see sexism in this thread but here we are. The data is quite clear on this: https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...profile-short-statistical-commentary-may-2023
 
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Raymond Lin said:
I can lose weight without setting foot in the gym. I can burn calories many other ways. If I want to build muscles then I will go to the gym but for simple calories burning exercise, just walk. Put on a podcast for an hour and walk. It's free.

Remember don't ruin it by getting a Big Mac on the way home to treat yourself. An hour walk burns around 250 cal, a Big Mac is 560 cal.
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If you only had 3 big mac burgers a day and excercise you could still lose weight. Probably not healthy mind you
 
I get 2 to 4 hours exercise a day, one of my things is that I refuse to buy 36 inch waist trousers always 34 never been 32,.(I am 6ft 2) my downfall is alcohol and I choose savoury over sweet anytime.
Don't think my BMI ever goes below 24 even when I spent a month plus walking across Spain
 
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