Obesity crisis in Ireland Mod Note post 1

Zorya · 06-02-2019 8:23am

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Now I'm not making excuses.
When I was a kid. If you got a Mars Medium Easter egg off a relative it was fairly good.
The egg was a generous size and you got two bars prices were three for €9/€10.
Now however the Mars medium size egg is smaller and you get two little bars. So, people tend to give three eggs that cost €4.50.

Kids can end up with 10 or more easter eggs, and then set about eating them on the one day - the insulin spike must be like a shock in their bodies. The chocolate is cheap oul sh!te too, I have seen small kids mindlessly drooling it they have had so much. Anyways I don't want to labour the point, but it kind of freaks me out. Not that I don't like treats - I really do - though I prefer to bake them. I worked in my youth in a biscuit factory in the UK and the ****e that goes into biscuits would turn your stomach. The fat they use is gross. Butter is much better. Anyways I'll stop - I must be triggered

* runs away from keyboard!

facehugger99 · 06-02-2019 8:30am

I think these new-fad diets are mental.

I work with a guy who fasts on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

He literally doesn't eat anything for 48 hours. He was telling us this in the canteen a couple of weeks back, said he's lost a couple of stone.

He looked really terrible last Thursday in work - not well looking at all.

Is this a new thing - fasting?

Just eat more sensibly in moderation, no need to be staring yourself for 2 days.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 8:36am

Fasting is okay if you're doing it safely and have a significant amount of weight to lose. If he looks terrible while fasting, he's probably not having electrolytes and magnesium supplements, which he should be having.

06-02-2019 8:47am

rgodard80a wrote: »

Encourage people to drink more water.

The bottled water industry appear to have done pretty well at pushing that agenda by misinterpreting and misquoting one or two studies on the subject.

We seem to drink _more_ than enough water at this stage. And the bottled water industry seem to have managed to install this fallacious "8 Glasses of water a day" myth in our heads.

They have managed to do this based off 2 studies mainly.

One they used to claim we need to drink that much water a day - but that is not actually what the "food and nutrition board" recommendation from 1945 in question says. They are simply misquoting it. And people have been ever since.

The other was from 2009-2012 and claims our children are dehydrated all the time - but the study used a ridiculously low bar for "dehydrated" and by a measure method that no one clinically actually uses (urine osmolality).

Two studies since that one then used the same standard and was, as you might have guessed, a study commissioned and paid for by bottled water manufacturers. The Nestle Water company or their subsidiaries in this case. And it too - because of the ridiculous standards used - concluded that 2/3 of children in France and Los Angeles were dehydrated all the time.

So no - I would be sceptical about pushing a "drink more water" idea, or what it would actually achieve. Even though people like Michelle Obama were pushing things like the "Drink Up Campaign" to get people drinking more of it.

pwurple · 06-02-2019 8:49am

Change to a 4 day working week.

Office workers are expected to do two or three jobs... Their paid work, look after their homes and families, and also exercise and keep healthy. The third gets dropped because there aren't enough free hours to get it all done.

Why the feck, in this age of automation, are we all working such ridiculous hours behind desks.

We should be on 10 hour weeks at this stage.

06-02-2019 8:50am

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Take diet there is so much information out there now about what is healthy/unhealthy. It's not rocket science.

Sure I agree but there is two problems I see there.

1) The first is there is _too much_ information out there on the subject.

If you go on to the website of the guy who calls himself the "Diet Doctor" he will be discussing and citing all the current research supporting his pet project of "Low Carb - High Fat" diets. Putting very convincing spins on all of it. And you come away thinking "That was great information".

Until you find a website promoting the opposite "Low Fat High Carb" diet and you find they have just as many citations, are just as good at spinning them, and their websites are just as shiny and professional looking and convincing.

2) The second is that much of the information out there is in a format most people can not actually read for themselves.

I am actually trained in reading and interpreting Science Papers and Journals. Most people are not. And what confounds this even further is the poor standard of "Science Journalism" in our society where they are more interested in a clickable title than reporting science well. Leading to sources like the "Daily Fail" telling us one week how healthy and wonderful some food or drink it - only to tell us another week it will give you cancer and make you unhealthy. I have lost it now but I used to have a link to them actually doing this on the same day in the same paper.

What makes this worse is how studies and information is funded. Often by the very people who benefit from a particular food or food group being shown in a good light. People who therefore use their money to influence the results to look good, or to bury them unpublished if they do not.

We are flooded with too much, hard to interpret, often conflicting information. Usually extreme information too as the negative or moderate findings get left unpublished and so confound meta-analysis.

You say "It is not Rocket Science" but sometimes I think we would be better off if it was!

Pinch Flat · 06-02-2019 8:53am

Eat less, especially processed ****e
Less take always. We’ve Become a fast food nation.
Cook st home more - fresh food - and impart this knowledge to kids
Move move

The nation has become very sedentary - most people are driven (school kids) or drive (college / secondary school children), people working. Agree that some have to, but a lot don’t have to either.

People need to consider walking or cycling more. A crazy amount of car journeys are very short.

Dtp1979 · 06-02-2019 9:04am

Far far too many kids getting carted to school 1/2 a mile down the road. Then they’re carted home and handed a tablet or stuck in from of the x box and fed processed food. There’s still so many parents who don’t know how to feed kids, or themselves, properly

06-02-2019 9:11am

Pinch Flat wrote: »

Eat less, especially processed ****e Less take always. We’ve Become a fast food nation. Cook st home more - fresh food - and impart this knowledge to kids Move move

I am certainly healthier than I was in college. And I eat _significantly_ more food than I did back then. In college I basically ate one meal a day - usually something like an oven pizza.

Now I eat 4 or 5 meals a day and any one of them in terms of quantity alone is more than I was eating in an entire day in college times. And I am now much slimmer, healthier, more flexible, fitter and more powerful.

Sure some of that is related to me having moved to a more active lifestyle. I would be erring slightly towards extreme in just how active I am now. But the increase in my activity while extreme does not scale with the 6-800% fold increase in my intake.

So I think your paragraph above would be just as good - if not much better - by simply dropping off the first two words. Eating less is simply not a requirement. How and what one eats is more important.

I think overall the problem is that we tend to focus on _one_ factor to explain obesity in our heads. Some people latch on to fast food. Others to sedentary lifestyles. Others will focus on aggressive food marketing causing people to over eat.

As obesity researcher David Allison says "What seems intuitively to be right is not always right." and that a rush to judgement can have "negative effects". And he points out that quite a number of studies actually failed to verify the correlation between PE in schools, Soft Drinks, and fast food and obesity. Or where it verified them, the correlation was much smaller than expected.

While other factors have been downplayed sometimes. Not getting enough sleep for example has correlated with over eating. Also since we are warm blooded animals a significant % of the calories we intake is used in regulating our body temperature. But modern clothing and technology like Air Conditioning has essentially had us "outsource" that work and so these calories are freed up.

Interestingly smoking suppresses appetite so if there is a reduction in smoking in a country it is possible you will see a correlating increase in average food consumption.

In the end it of course comes down to what you eat - how you eat - and how you move. But there still is a rainbow of factors and variables in play that can have all kinds of influences.

For me the biggest part appears to be cultural. But I have no citations or studies to back up that impression at this time. It just feels to me like meals for many have become a hurdle to get over/past in our day so we can get back to all the other things vying for our attention. Whereas in my house for me they are an event in and of themselves and the focus of much of my day and my attention - and we eat mindfully not while doing something else or while rushing to get back to something else.

And that cultural shift means people are more inclined to eat quick and nasty. Fast foods. Processed Foods. Ready Meals. Quick Fixes. And incentives or disincentives like Sugar Taxes are not likely to cause the more central Cultural Shifts I think are likely to be required to combat any Obesity Issues real or imagined.

RacoonQueen · 06-02-2019 9:24am

rob316 wrote: »

Picks up the 20% fat as opposed to the 5%. Simple choices can make a huge difference.

Nothing wrong with higher fat mince. It's not high fat meat making people fat.

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Yes, I understand this.
I just think to have a healthy lifestyle and diet isimportant.
Sometimes people focus to much on BMI.
Now I'm not for a second encouraging people to be over weight.

GAA Beo wrote: »

Yeah I think the BMI thing is overplayed. Most rugby players and weightlifters would be called overweight/obese on the BMI scale.

BMI is hugely important. Weightlifters and rugby players are not the people BMI targets. It is a good guide for people who don't have low body fat % to gauge where they are. I find it hilarious when people who do not have the body of a weightlifter or rugby player and would probably have a high BMI talking about how BMI is rubbish because it would mark a rugby player as obese. THAT DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU :rolleyes:

pwurple wrote: »

Change to a 4 day working week.

Office workers are expected to do two or three jobs... Their paid work, look after their homes and families, and also exercise and keep healthy. The third gets dropped because there aren't enough free hours to get it all done.

Why the feck, in this age of automation, are we all working such ridiculous hours behind desks.

We should be on 10 hour weeks at this stage.

That's rubbish. It's laziness. A lot of people manage work/study/family/activity.
The cycling/triathlon/running/fitness forums are full of people who spend multiple hours a week training on top of work and family life.
People go home in the evenings and watch TV, they have plenty of time for exercise or to prep healthy meals they are just too lazy to do it.

Gimme A Pound · 06-02-2019 9:28am

If I eat a diet yogurt or drink a diet fizzy drink, I will be absolutely starving. Tinfoil hat alert: the diet foods industry needs you to fail so that you keep buying its products.

seamus · 06-02-2019 9:33am

Make parents buy a €1,000/year licence to drive their kids to school. Force all companies to charge BIK on their provided parking spaces.

Get people off their lazy holes and walk or cycle their commutes.

Wanderer78 · 06-02-2019 9:36am

seamus wrote:

Make parents buy a â‚¬1,000/year licence to drive their kids to school. Force all companies to charge BIK on their provided parking spaces.

More taxes rock, people always change their approaches when taxes are increased, don't they?

FutureGuy · 06-02-2019 9:41am

Stop drinking fruit juices and fizzy drinks.
Cut out white breads and pasta and keep carbs in check.
Don't eat or drink after 6 pm except water and black coffee (no sugar).
Eat good fats.
Drink water.
Exercise 3 x 30 min/week where you build up a sweat.

It's not rocket science.

Gimme A Pound · 06-02-2019 9:45am

"Don't eat after 6pm" - why? What if you go for a run or to the gym after 6pm? That rule is completely arbitrary. And it is starving oneself too. What if you finish your dinner at 6 and go to bed at 11.30? And i finish work at 6 so I don't eat dinner until nearly 7.

What if you just eat salad after 6?

Wibbs · 06-02-2019 9:45am

Deleted User wrote: »

I am actually trained in reading and interpreting Science Papers and Journals. Most people are not. And what confounds this even further is the poor standard of "Science Journalism" in our society where they are more interested in a clickable title than reporting science well. Leading to sources like the "Daily Fail" telling us one week how healthy and wonderful some food or drink it - only to tell us another week it will give you cancer and make you unhealthy. I have lost it now but I used to have a link to them actually doing this on the same day in the same paper.

What makes this worse is how studies and information is funded. Often by the very people who benefit from a particular food or food group being shown in a good light. People who therefore use their money to influence the results to look good, or to bury them unpublished if they do not.

This plus a bazillion. There are concerns in a few disciplines that too many studies are sloppy, or have bad data, even if not funded by biased sources and then on top you have the media ever hungry for more stuff to publish to vie for our attention.

06-02-2019 9:46am

Wanderer78 wrote: »

More taxes rock, people always change their approaches when taxes are increased, don't they?

Yes and no it seems. The "Regressive" Soda Tax in the US is a good example. A study there suggested that implementing such a tax could have a weight effect of up to 8 pounds a year on Americans.

The studies were of two types of tax. A % tax and a fixed rate tax. I think if I recall both were "20" as in 20% and 20cent.

The % increase had less of an effect - 3 pounds I think it was - but more wide reaching. In that a reduction was observed for Americans of all wealth classes. The 20 cent hit had a more dramatic effect of the 8 pounds observation but it seemed to only hit the middle classes significantly. The upper classes just paid that money anyway cause they could. The poorer classes worked around it - waiting for sales or buying in bulk or other means to get their soda cheaper.

Following all that other studies showed that just because people were taking on less soda - that did not mean they were not finding their calories elsewhere.

So it seems that behaviours do change with a tax quite often - but sometimes the wrong people or the wrong way - or that behaviour is balanced off by a secondary change elsewhere that simply reverses whatever positive effect the tax itself was hoping to engender. So taxation is a useful tool to have in our arsenal it seems - but actually deploying it correctly or usefully is probably something we are not yet all that good at.

Wibbs wrote: »

This plus a bazillion. There are concerns in a few disciplines that too many studies are sloppy, or have bad data, even if not funded by biased sources and then on top you have the media ever hungry for more stuff to publish to vie for our attention.

Agreed. But my gut feeling - subjective really - is that the only thing worse than the sloppy studies or the bad data is the wealth of entirely unpublished studies. It confounds meta analysis - removes from access studies that likely were done well with good data - and fuels the potential for what studies are published to seem more significant in isolation to people like Media clickbait manufacturers who want to hype them.

If we could target the entire word of unpublished research and do it well - it would mediate the effect of bad studies and poor methods and data on our knowledge as a whole.

Wanderer78 · 06-02-2019 9:46am

Marvin Flabby Twinkle wrote:

"Don't eat after 6pm" - why? What if you go for a run or to the gym after 6pm? That rule is completely arbitrary. And it is starving oneself too. What if you finish your dinner at 6 and go to bed at 11.30? And i finish work at 6 so I don't eat dinner until nearly 7.

What if you work shifts?

Dtp1979 · 06-02-2019 9:47am

Marvin Flabby Twinkle wrote: »

"Don't eat after 6pm" - why? What if you go for a run or to the gym after 6pm? That rule is completely arbitrary. And it is starving oneself too. What if you finish your dinner at 6 and go to bed at 11.30? And i finish work at 6 so I don't eat dinner until nearly 7.

What if you just eat salad after 6?

The time of day that you eat has no bearing on your weight gain/loss. It’s all down to calories

NIMAN · 06-02-2019 9:49am

It would help if the schools actually had a proper PE class.

My kids school do 1hr of PE per week.

Yet maybe 5hrs of religion.

Should be the reverse.

FutureGuy · 06-02-2019 9:50am

Marvin Flabby Twinkle wrote: »

"Don't eat after 6pm" - why? What if you go for a run or to the gym after 6pm? That rule is completely arbitrary. And it is starving oneself too. What if you finish your dinner at 6 and go to bed at 11.30? And i finish work at 6 so I don't eat dinner until nearly 7.

What if you just eat salad after 6?

Starving yourself is a disaster so I agree with you there. Your body reacts poorly and keeps fat. I'm saying that you would have your calories eaten by 6-7 pm. For some people, it might be 8pm. So you are not starving, you are just decreasing your window for feeding.

We have an undiagnosed epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the country. A 14-16 hour fast each day (most of which occurs in the evening and when you are sleeping) allows the liver to take a break and allows the body use other fuel sources.

c6ysaphjvqw41k · 06-02-2019 9:51am

I don't think McDonald's is the problem exactly, its just the amount of anything that people eat. I'm quite slim and if I want to eat 6 chicken nuggets from McDonalds every once in a while, let me. Shouldn't be banned. Its people eating McDonald's or takeaways etc. a few times a week. My sister recently put on a lot of weight, and she eats takeaway or fast food almost every night.

I think portion sizes are a major problem too. Most of the time eating out I wouldn't finish my meal. And all the sides everyone eats. People eat lasagna with chips on the side. Why??? Carbs with carbs. The lasagna alone is enough. Curry with chips and rice. Most of the time if I make curry I wont even make rice its the curry with a LOT of vegetables.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 9:52am

FutureGuy wrote: »

Stop drinking fruit juices and fizzy drinks.
Cut out white breads and pasta and keep carbs in check.
Don't eat or drink after 6 pm except water and black coffee (no sugar).
Eat good fats.
Drink water.
Exercise 3 x 30 min/week where you build up a sweat.

It's not rocket science.

Eating after 6 won't have any bearing on your weight. A calorie is a calorie, whether you're having it at 9pm or 9am!

I've lost just under 5 stone (weighing tonight, hoping to only be 1-2lbs away from it tonight) and I sure as hell don't limit my eating to before 6pm. Sure I don't get home from work til 7pm!

I eat when I want to eat. If I'm hungry, I'll eat. Whether that's breakfast time or 3am, I don't care. What matters is what I'm putting into my body.

Wanderer78 · 06-02-2019 9:53am

Deleted User wrote:

So it seems that behaviours do change with a tax quite often - but sometimes the wrong people or the wrong way - or that behaviour is balanced off by a secondary change elsewhere that simply reverses whatever positive effect the tax itself was hoping to engender. So taxation is a useful tool to have in our arsenal it seems - but actually deploying it correctly or usefully is probably something we are not yet all that good at.

I'd say increasing taxes sometimes works at changing attitudes, but my gut says, it kinna doesn't. The human mind is a strange thing, particularly when it comes to addictive substances, our behaviours become more grey than black or white, I'm always wary of research that supplies absolute evidence to support that increasing tariffs causes a drop in usage, we truly are an odd bunch when it comes to this kinna stuff, it's also hard to know what to do about it

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 9:55am

FutureGuy wrote: »

Starving yourself is a disaster so I agree with you there. Your body reacts poorly and keeps fat. I'm saying that you would have your calories eaten by 6-7 pm. For some people, it might be 8pm. So you are not starving, you are just decreasing your window for feeding.

We have an undiagnosed epidemic of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the country. A 14-16 hour fast each day (most of which occurs in the evening and when you are sleeping) allows the liver to take a break and allows the body use other fuel sources.

Intermittent fasting is very different to "don't eat after 6pm," though. When I do IF, my window is 6-10pm because that's what suits my lifestyle.

06-02-2019 9:56am

Dtp1979 wrote: »

The time of day that you eat has no bearing on your weight gain/loss. It’s all down to calories

I helped a guy lose a lot of weight recently. I wrote about it a few weeks ago. And I did it entirely by not changing a thing he ate as he was already eating very well and excercising. I merely changed how and _when_ he ate it. He was eating his calorie rich foods for example nowhere near the times he was doing calorie intense activity. He was sedentary at his desk when he was taking on the carlorie heeavy foods. And this also led to afternoon fatigue issues or "crashing". Merely by moving his diet around on a time table he lost weight, became more alert when he was actually working, and generally feels much much better.

Calories are indeed a huge thing but I would be cautious to say it is "all" down to calories. For example some studies on the effects of chemicals that are in our day-to-day- world have been interesting.

Yes some of them were only done in rats but what we observed is that rats exposed to those chemicals became heavier despite been fed significantly _less_ calories than the control group not exposed to those chemicals. Clearly telling the fat rats to eat less calories while they sit there watching the slimmer rats gorge themselves is not likely to help them.

Calories are a huge factor. I will say it again just to be clear I am not undermining any notions there. But what our bodies do with calories and why is also a massive thing. And things that affect that naturally and artificially are part of a rainbow of influences we are becoming more and more aware of.

But it also seems that many seminars in places like the US that were held and led to many reporters going back to their news papers to write that it is exercise - not calorie intake - that was the issue were funded by - wait for it - Coca Cola. Secretly. And when it came out Coke started finally to publicize what seminars it was funding. But usually only years _after_ the seminar was held. So the memes in our head saying fatsos just need to move more - much of them come from the industries invested in them eating more.

It is so easy to focus on one factor. For our brains and for our research. But the truth appears to be so very much more complicated than that.

FutureGuy · 06-02-2019 10:02am

Dalomanakora wrote: »

Intermittent fasting is very different to "don't eat after 6pm," though. When I do IF, my window is 6-10pm because that's what suits my lifestyle.

Yes but I have to generalize somewhat so the advice is based on someone working 9am-5pm.

06-02-2019 10:05am

Dalomanakora wrote: »

Intermittent fasting is very different to "don't eat after 6pm," though. When I do IF, my window is 6-10pm because that's what suits my lifestyle.

totally agree, intermittent fasting is not starving yourself. Fair enough you would go through a few uncomfortable days getting used to it. I am not on day 32 on IF, i start eating at 12.30 and finish by 20.30. I still have 2 cups of americano in the morning. I havent actually been doing it correctly as i eat the same really and am totally guilty of eating biscuits but i have shed 3.5kgs since i started. I do exercise but i was stuck at 82.5kg that was like a wall but the IF helped me get through it.

I have friends who moan about their weight but dont do anything to help it. Intermittent fasting has been far the best and easiest lifestyle change i made. It took a few weeks before i started seeing other health benefits like sleeping and alertness but i am starting to feel it more and more now.

Rikand · 06-02-2019 10:08am

Wibbs wrote: »

We drink more from what I've read. Quite a bit more and more regularly. For all the stereotype of the Irish as drunkards, up to the 90's we had one of the lower rates of liver disease in the EU. In the past the pub was where you had a drink, home drinking was much less a thing for most people. It tended to be in spurts too. So a guy(usually a guy) would head to the pub of a weekend, and he might get hammered, but during the working week he was mostly "dry". Lent was a big thing too and many gave up the grog for lent. These days it's more a bottle of wine of an evening. It's only a few glasses your honour.

So really we have to blame the government for our obesity. Their way-to-strict drink driving laws are taking people away from their one day a week few pints and driving home carefully and instead encouraging them to drink every day at home. This saves lives on the roads but leads to more deaths on the homes

The knock on social effect is also changed. Had a person been drinking 4 pints of lager or a bottle of wine in the pub each night of the week, they'd be the talk of the town. But do it at home and no-one has a clue and the drinker can pile on the pounds without any social judgment.

Strict drink driving laws are a big part of the reason why our waistlines are reaching scary new widths

Wibbs · 06-02-2019 10:08am

Dalomanakora wrote: »

A calorie is a calorie.

It's not. The whole calories things is too simplistic. A calorie from neat vodka is very different from a calorie from fat, or a calorie from protein or a calorie from carbohydrate. For a start the calorie from neat vodka won't put a gram of weight on you. It simply can't. If you took three people ingesting say 2000 calories a day and one ate 80% of their 2000 as fats, another ate 80% of their 2000 as carbs and the last 80% of their 2000 as proteins they will have very different effects on the body and different results.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 10:11am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

totally agree, intermittent fasting is not starving yourself. Fair enough you would go through a few uncomfortable days getting used to it. I am not on day 32 on IF, i start eating at 12.30 and finish by 20.30. I still have 2 cups of americano in the morning. I havent actually been doing it correctly as i eat the same really and am totally guilty of eating biscuits but i have shed 3.5kgs since i started. I do exercise but i was stuck at 82.5kg that was like a wall but the IF helped me get through it.

I have friends who moan about their weight but dont do anything to help it. Intermittent fasting has been far the best and easiest lifestyle change i made. It took a few weeks before i started seeing other health benefits like sleeping and alertness but i am starting to feel it more and more now.

I really like IF just because it fits into my life easily.

I'm also in Slimming World, but the two combined work for me (before anyone complains about SW's war on fats, I use my "syns" and dairy allowances on full fat dairy), because I don't generally get hungry before 2-3pm. At that stage, I've already gone past my lunch break, so I just hold out a few hours til I'm home and voila, I can have a big ass lovely meal that fills me and keeps me happy.

It's more difficult when I'm bored on days off, but ultimately that's just me wanting to eat from boredom :pac:

Macy0161 · 06-02-2019 10:12am

IF to lose weight is purely a way of achieving calorie deficit. The other "benefits" of IF, are only potential benefits at this stage, as although there's some studies that suggest benefits, it's not proven.

Back to the original topic - portion control and personal responsibility are the main things. I don't hold out much hope, as even a number of obesity specialists are on the "not the persons" fault bandwagon, largely on the basis of studies done on rodents not humans.

When I was prop forward weight talking shíte about BMI being rubbish because a small percentage of athletes skew the figues, no one was forcing me to eat too much; I already knew I was eating too much and too much rubbish; I just wasn't bothered. No tax would've changed that. No education campaign or home ec classes was going to change that - I already knew how to cook, and good and "bad" foods, I just ate too much. Until I decided to do something about it, it wasn't going to change.

There's a whole different debate about how those families that provide a chicken fillet roll for national school childrens lunches, and chipper/ takeaway several nights a week afford it. I don't believe they don't know it's bad - it's whether they care and just want the convenience. There's a lot of bs about "healthy" being more expensive, which isn't my experience. Maybe if you're swapping something processed for something processed.

So to say again, it's just another thing that a large proportion of the population won't take personal responsibility for.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 10:13am

Wibbs wrote: »

It's not. The whole calories things is too simplistic. A calorie from neat vodka is very different from a calorie from fat, or a calorie from protein or a calorie from carbohydrate. For a start the calorie from neat vodka won't put a gram of weight on you. It simply can't. If you took three people ingesting say 2000 calories a day and one ate 80% of their 2000 as fats, another ate 80% of their 2000 as carbs and the last 80% of their 2000 as proteins they will have very different effects on the body and different results.

For sure. I don't even bother counting calories when I drink vodka tbh because I know it won't hold on my body

My point was more in relation to when you eat. Obviously a 2000 calorie diet of fats and protein would yield better weight loss than 2000 calories of carbs, because the keto approach encourages your body to eat into fat stores and such, as opposed to the carb-heavy approach.

But the time you have those calories isn't going to make an enormous difference to your weight, what will make a difference is what, specifically, you're eating.

FutureGuy · 06-02-2019 10:13am

Deleted User wrote: »

I helped a guy lose a lot of weight recently. I wrote about it a few weeks ago. And I did it entirely by not changing a thing he ate as he was already eating very well and excercising. I merely changed how and _when_ he ate it. He was eating his calorie rich foods for example nowhere near the times he was doing calorie intense activity. He was sedentary at his desk when he was taking on the carlorie heeavy foods. And this also led to afternoon fatigue issues or "crashing". Merely by moving his diet around on a time table he lost weight, became more alert when he was actually working, and generally feels much much better.

Calories are indeed a huge thing but I would be cautious to say it is "all" down to calories. For example some studies on the effects of chemicals that are in our day-to-day- world have been interesting.

Yes some of them were only done in rats but what we observed is that rats exposed to those chemicals became heavier despite been fed significantly _less_ calories than the control group not exposed to those chemicals. Clearly telling the fat rats to eat less calories while they sit there watching the slimmer rats gorge themselves is not likely to help them.

Calories are a huge factor. I will say it again just to be clear I am not undermining any notions there. But what our bodies do with calories and why is also a massive thing. And things that affect that naturally and artificially are part of a rainbow of influences we are becoming more and more aware of.

But it also seems that many seminars in places like the US that were held and led to many reporters going back to their news papers to write that it is exercise - not calorie intake - that was the issue were funded by - wait for it - Coca Cola. Secretly. And when it came out Coke started finally to publicize what seminars it was funding. But usually only years _after_ the seminar was held. So the memes in our head saying fatsos just need to move more - much of them come from the industries invested in them eating more.

It is so easy to focus on one factor. For our brains and for our research. But the truth appears to be so very much more complicated than that.

A very good example and saves me a response.

We also have certain food brands talking about that "3pm crash". That 3pm crash isn't natural, it is a sign of something wrong with how we are feeding ourselves.

Many people work 9am-5pm, have their most calorie-laden meal at 6pm and then sit down in front of the TV for the night.

_Brian · 06-02-2019 10:13am

Your body acts like a savings account with energy.

You eat excess over expenditure and you save the energy as fat.

You eat less than your expenditure of energy and you loose fat as it’s used up.

That’s it, it’s not about what time you eat or what colour foods you eat. It’s simple maths.

For your health you should of course eat as wide a variety of foods as possible.

To add to that.
We have a problem with personal responsibility, the facts above place the responsibility with the person and the current population don’t like that. They roam social media looking for foods to blame, it’s the wrong colour, wrong time etc. That excuses their responsibility. People need to step up and realise they are eating themselves fat, they’re doing it to themselves.

Wanderer78 · 06-02-2019 10:17am

_Brian wrote:

Thatâ€™s it, itâ€™s not about what time you eat or what colour foods you eat. Itâ€™s simple maths.

What if your brain is wired differently, and has a different kind of maths machine, that continually says, feed me? There's nothing simple when it comes to food addiction

Lollipops23 · 06-02-2019 10:23am

Honestly, so much comes down to personal responsibility.

I gained a large amount of weight a few years back (I was eating my feelings after being diagnosed with a life changing illness).

I wasn't happy; I wanted to feel good about myself. So I copped on, weighed myself New Year's morning 2016 and promised myself I would never see that number again. I changed my eating habits and shed 2 stone within 9 months. Have kept it off, too.

I'm still slightly overweight, but no longer tipping into Obese (I was about 3lbs shy of that when I started). I have different ways of coping with stress and upset now (ie, I don't look for the answer at the bottom of a packet of biscuits). I still enjoy my grub, but have discovered a whole new world of dishes that I love to cook.

Honestly, I've been there and it's hard to make the change; but if you're a grown up, you have to just do it and bite the damn bullet.

Macy0161 · 06-02-2019 10:24am

The science still supports a calorie being a calorie. The science doesn't support that you'll lose more weight on low carb. In fact, the most recent studies suggest (suggest, not proven, like IF, Keto etc.) that low carb is bad for in particular gut health, and that it's hard to get enough fibre by avoiding cereals.

The "solution" for most people is still eat less (largely portion control) and move a bit more. But mainly eat less. Overly complicating it with IF and other "diets" based off people trying to sell books isn't the solution population wide.

It sometimes feels like diets have replaced religion for some people - placing faith in unproven benefits.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 10:27am

Macy0161 wrote: »

The science still supports a calorie being a calorie. The science doesn't support that you'll lose more weight on low carb. In fact, the most recent studies suggest (suggest, not proven, like IF, Keto etc.) that low carb is bad for in particular gut health, and that it's hard to get enough fibre by avoiding cereals.

The "solution" for most people is still eat less (largely portion control) and move a bit more. But mainly eat less. Overly complicating it with IF and other "diets" based off people trying to sell books isn't the solution population wide.

It sometimes feels like diets have replaced religion for some people - placing faith in unproven benefits.

A lot of people don't see the likes of IF or keto as a diet though - for many people, it's a totally attainable, long term, sustainable change in how they eat.

I've lost a good bit of weight and I certainly wouldn't consider myself to be on a diet, I'm just making wise choices each day and I never feel like I'm on a diet either. What I'm doing is something I can easily do for life.

_Brian · 06-02-2019 10:40am

Wanderer78 wrote: »

What if your brain is wired differently, and has a different kind of maths machine, that continually says, feed me? There's nothing simple when it comes to food addiction

Your still getting fat because your overeating.
It’s stikl something your doing to yourself.
It’s still your responsibility to change something or get help.

It’s anbit like “it’s jist my metabolism”
The actual number of people with these conditions is minuscule, the vast majority of obease people are that way because they don’t take responsibility for their actions, they’ve convinced themselves it’s not their fault but some wider conspiracy against their thinness.

Macy0161 · 06-02-2019 10:41am

Dalomanakora wrote: »

A lot of people don't see the likes of IF or keto as a diet though - for many people, it's a totally attainable, long term, sustainable change in how they eat.

I've lost a good bit of weight and I certainly wouldn't consider myself to be on a diet, I'm just making wise choices each day and I never feel like I'm on a diet either. What I'm doing is something I can easily do for life.

I completely accept that it works for some people, and I have zero problem with that. Whatever is sustainable for an individual is the best option.

However, I do have a problem with people pushing it based on unproven benefits, studies on rats, psuedo science. Some of it is verging on anti-vacc level "science".

There's some interesting potential benefits of IF, for example, but they're so far not proven. I'm not dismissive of those, I've followed the science to see if it's something I might follow, but there just isn't the support there. Yet.

FutureGuy · 06-02-2019 10:47am

_Brian wrote: »

Your still getting fat because your overeating.
It’s stikl something your doing to yourself.
It’s still your responsibility to change something or get help.

It’s anbit like “it’s jist my metabolism”
The actual number of people with these conditions is minuscule, the vast majority of obease people are that way because they don’t take responsibility for their actions, they’ve convinced themselves it’s not their fault but some wider conspiracy against their thinness.

It is worth noting that there is a small fraction of people whose mechanism to lose weight is fundamentally broken in their body.

Wibbs · 06-02-2019 10:49am

Macy0161 wrote: »

The science still supports a calorie being a calorie.

What "science"? A calorie is a unit of energy, how different substances are utilised by the body varies quite a bit. A simple carbohydrate "calorie" is metabolised in a different way and has different effects in the body than a "calorie" of fat, or a "calorie" of protein. Charcoal is high in calorific energy and while sprinkling powdered charcoal on your food will give you black poo, it won't put on an ounce of fat on you. This is a biological fact.

A "calorie" of alcohol is different again. The body treats it as a mild toxin and breaks it down to excrete it and no fat can be laid down by consuming it. Yet you'll regularly read and hear people say "alcohol is fattening". This is a nonsense. Now a pint of beer or a couple of glasses of vino does contain "calories" that the body can absorb in the form of sugars, but the alcohol has nada to do with it and if you drink a bunch of vodka and tonics your weight won't and can't go up.. It can cause insulin changes and a lot of people get an attack of the munchies for greasy takeaways afterwards, which will make you fat, but the alcohol itself can't add fat to a fat cell.

06-02-2019 10:52am

_Brian wrote: »

That’s it, it’s not about what time you eat or what colour foods you eat. It’s simple maths.

Macy0161 wrote: »

The science still supports a calorie being a calorie.

The idea that a calorie is a calorie - and it does not matter what you eat but how the maths work - can be correct or incorrect depending on what you are talking about. So you are not wrong - you just have to be more specific.

If the body at the end of the metabolic processes of breaking food down actually receives 2000 calories say - then yes absolutely a calorie is a calorie. Here it is pretty much correct to say that.

However when we are actually eating our food and we have two choices before us both of them labelled as containing 2000 calories - then a calorie is not a calorie there. Because how many calories are _in_ the food does not tell us how many the body will get out of it.

If one option is 2000 calories mostly glucose, another mostly fructose, and another mostly protein - then it absolutely matters what you eat. Your body will at the end of the mathematics receive different amounts from each. Some foods involve the Liver in the way others do not - wasting energy. Some result in much more loss of energy in heat - the way others do not.

What compounds the issues there is something else that also goes on. Different foods affect appetite in different ways. Some foods make you feel satiated sooner and so eat less. Some give short term spikes in blood sugar leading to a crash that gives food cravings later. So in another sense - quite separate from calorie mathematics - what a person is eating and when can have a lot of behavioural impacts on diet too. If a particular food group is more likely to leave you with cravings an hour or two later for example - then having that early in the day when you will be left with those cravings to deal with is likely to have more behavioural impacts than - say - having it before sleep when you will sleep through dealing with those issues.

We can shout at people about "responsibility" of course - and there has to be a strong element of personal responsibility in play for sure, no one disagrees with you there I think - but if we absolutely know that eating a particular food, or eating it a particular way, or eating it at a particular time is directly going to impact the impulses, cravings, motivations, will power, and other attributes of self-control and compulsion that make up the human process - then that should be part of it too. Personal Responsibility can be augmented and supported by knowledge and data that facilitates it and reduces constant attacks and tests of will power and motivation.

But looking at a fat person and a slim person and simply assuming one has more will power than the other is a bad conclusion we could reach for example. They might have _exactly_ the same level of will power but differences in mere timing and behaviour might mean one has more stresses and tests of it than the other. For example.

Ariadne · 06-02-2019 10:53am

I've recently been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Addictions are part of it. I'm just very glad my addiction has been to food and not to drugs so I'll just ignore the pontificating and be on my way.

Wibbs · 06-02-2019 10:57am

Macy0161 wrote: »

There's some interesting potential benefits of IF, for example, but they're so far not proven.

Actually calorie restriction(with optimum nutrition) as a major influencer on longevity in organisms has a very long history going back nearly a century with countless studies backing it up. Including a fair number of studies in primates and humans. Indeed it's one of the few mechanisms where longevity can be reliably increased in an organism. Quite a few of these studies noted that intermittent fasting had similar, if not as dramatic effects and came with fewer negative effects than "strict" calorie restriction(increased susceptibility to cold, negative effects on fertility). The insulin mechanism seems to be a large part of it and studies into very long lived people has thrown up a few possible mechanisms, but one that is strongly implicated is their genetically superior insulin mechanism.

Dalomanakora · 06-02-2019 10:59am

Succubus_ wrote: »

I've recently been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Addictions are part of it. I'm just very glad my addiction has been to food and not to drugs so I'll just ignore the pontificating and be on my way.

Hey, I'm not trying to pontificate at all, just as someone who's had enormous issues with over eating and binge eating, I just want to say that when you get more stable (I know it takes a while with borderline and other disorders), you can lose weight if you want to with the right support. Ultimately you have a more difficult journey ahead though IF you choose to try lose weight.

Best of luck with your treatment.

GAA Beo · 06-02-2019 11:02am

JupiterKid wrote: »

If you look at old newsreel footage of 60 or 70 years ago, most adults used to cycle bikes as cars were an unaffordable luxury to most. People, usually men, did binge drink at weekends in pubs but home drinking was very rare until the 1970s/80s and nowhere near the extent it is done today.

True they did cycle more back in the day. I thought they drank more too but it appears that isn't true and we are actually drinking more now. It's odd considering there was way more pubs around back in the day than now, but as you say the home drinking wasn't a thing really. Now it's big business for the supermarkets and offies.

McDonalds was a rare treat back then - now some families eat fast food every single day.

I suspected as much by the amount of families I see in McDonalds everytime I'm in there. I'm not a parent, but surely having fast food every day is very poor parenting?

Wibbs · 06-02-2019 11:06am

Deleted User wrote: »

But looking at a fat person and a slim person and simply assuming one has more will power than the other is a bad conclusion we could reach for example. They might have _exactly_ the same level of will power but differences in mere timing and behaviour might mean one has more stresses and tests of it than the other. For example.

Or they simply have different appetites. I'm thin because food is mostly fuel to me, I don't eat much and have little of an appetite, unless I do a lot of moving around in a day. Some days I nearly forget to eat. Now when I am hungry I'd eat through the door of the fridge to get to the food and if I was like that everyday I'd be the Goodyear blimp in a month. I've near zero willpower on that score. I'm just lucky my willpower doesn't get tested.

Ariadne · 06-02-2019 11:11am

Dalomanakora wrote: »

Hey, I'm not trying to pontificate at all, just as someone who's had enormous issues with over eating and binge eating, I just want to say that when you get more stable (I know it takes a while with borderline and other disorders), you can lose weight if you want to with the right support. Ultimately you have a more difficult journey ahead though IF you choose to try lose weight.

Best of luck with your treatment.

I'm glad that you're managing to overcome your issues with over eating and binge eating, I know what it's like. I actually have lost 1 stone 4lbs/8.2 kg in the last few months so I'm on my way, with more to go! It's just that in the past threads like this have sent me off on a self-hating binge and I don't think people realise that saying ''personal responsibility'' only makes you feel more sh1t about yourself for not being ''disciplined'' enough and it makes people more likely to eat to comfort themselves. Not everyone who overeats does so for these reasons of course but it helps to be mindful of it.

Obesity crisis in Ireland Mod Note post 1

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