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Don't Try to Lose Weight by Exercising

Vinny said:
That does not detract from the fact that people are now bigger gluttons and can afford to be.
My parents NEVER bought a takeaway, and I almost never do, but anyone, almost, can get food delivered to their door within a few 10's minutes, pretty much 24-7-365.

When I was a kid, people ate 3 meals a day, possibly a SMALL snack - a couple of bisuits - mid morning, and that was pretty much it. That was totally normal.
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Yep. So many people want the easy option.
It's the same with exercise. How many would choose a short bus/tram journey rather than walk, or choose the lift rather than stairs?

Snacks is interesting. There's a guy on Youtube called Dr Eric Berg.
In one of his videos he compares French and USA diets.
The French are generally thinner, despite eating 4x the butter and 60% more cheese. They do have higher purity laws though, and eat less snacks. It seems that their appetite is satisfied more from the main meals.
 
eternumviti said:
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My old mate had to eat around 4000 calories a day to keep himself at a steady 35 odd stone. He didn't move much.

He doesn't move at all now, the silly sod simply couldn't get a grip on it. He picked up C19 early, and his old heart said 'enough'.
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I was hoping that this damn covid would provide a wake up call to all of us, about the dangers of being severely overweight.

But...I'm not so sure. A nephew gets his jab this weekend, despite being fairly young. It's his obesity which has put him in the risk category.
I understand the logic of protecting the vulnerable, but don't we end up assuming that the health service is there to manage our health, and not us as individuals?
 
Vinny said:
That does not detract from the fact that people are now bigger gluttons and can afford to be.
My parents NEVER bought a takeaway, and I almost never do, but anyone, almost, can get food delivered to their door within a few 10's minutes, pretty much 24-7-365.

When I was a kid, people ate 3 meals a day, possibly a SMALL snack - a couple of bisuits - mid morning, and that was pretty much it. That was totally normal.
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Your parents never bought you fish and chips? I find that rather sad.
 
It's all very fraught. 'Body positivity' means that it's 'OK to be fat', but of course it isn't. OTOH, 'body shaming' can lead to depression which, in turn, can lead to comfort eating.

One answer would be to heavily tax unhealthy food/snacks, but I can't see any government chancing their arms with such a policy.
 
Vinny said:
That does not detract from the fact that people are now bigger gluttons and can afford to be.
My parents NEVER bought a takeaway, and I almost never do, but anyone, almost, can get food delivered to their door within a few 10's minutes, pretty much 24-7-365.

When I was a kid, people ate 3 meals a day, possibly a SMALL snack - a couple of bisuits - mid morning, and that was pretty much it. That was totally normal.
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Very little evidence of us eating much more or being less active than we were 40-50 years.

All in that Spector book I’ve been shilling! So many myths around this, and it’s easy to slip into moralising.
 
kabayiri said:
Yep. So many people want the easy option.
It's the same with exercise. How many would choose a short bus/tram journey rather than walk, or choose the lift rather than stairs?

Snacks is interesting. There's a guy on Youtube called Dr Eric Berg.
In one of his videos he compares French and USA diets.
The French are generally thinner, despite eating 4x the butter and 60% more cheese. They do have higher purity laws though, and eat less snacks. It seems that their appetite is satisfied more from the main meals.
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Nail on the head. Lack of active travel in this country is shocking, there is a culture of mocking people who take exercise or even worse when it comes to cyclists. From memory over 70% of car journeys are of less than 6kms.

Other countries take food more seriously & take time to eat. I am not perfect but I do take regular exercise & lost 3-4 stone from cycling & other changes.
 
Cav said:
Your parents never bought you fish and chips? I find that rather sad.
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Not so far as I recall, but Friday was chip day, every week, usually fish, sometimes suasages, burgers, a slice of meat pie, or whatever. The deep-fat fryer was filled with beef driping.
 
Seanm said:
Very little evidence of us eating much more or being less active than we were 40-50 years.
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Errrr, there's an obesity "epidemic" in a great deal of the western world, including the UK. Or are you arguing against the laws of thermodynamics, as is mentioned above by @MikeMA ?
 
Woodface said:
Nail on the head. Lack of active travel in this country is shocking, there is a culture of mocking people who take exercise or even worse when it comes to cyclists.
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I agree there is not enough exercising going on (although COVID has helped here) but mocking those who do???? Really? I have had nothing but praise and admiration when I talk about exercising.
 
cutting42 said:
I agree there is not enough exercising going on (although COVID has helped here) but mocking those who do???? Really? I have had nothing but praise and admiration when I talk about exercising.
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I dunno about 'mocking', but I've had enough of joggers powering along without bothering to move a centimetre off course to keep socially distant.
 
Another though occurs; might the increase in obesity be related to the decrease in smoking? My father stopped smoking when the cost of ciggies went through the roof, his weight then increased dramatically.
 
Seanm said:
Very little evidence of us eating much more or being less active than we were 40-50 years.
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These people claim a correlation between increased food supply and changes in body weight:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4490816/

However looking at their results, I call BS. Their correlation is really only significant for high-income countries, and when you look at the data (Fig. 2), there are two clear outliers with high leverage in the regression. I bet if you remove those two, there would be no correlation at all.
 
Vinny said:
Errrr, there's an obesity "epidemic" in a great deal of the western world, including the UK. Or are you arguing against the laws of thermodynamics, as is mentioned above by @MikeMA ?
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You’re assuming though that the obesity is caused by increased intake. The type of food we consume has changed, at least in places like the U.K. and USA, where the problem seems more acute. It may not be as simple as: calories in - calories out = net weight change. Going back to the gut flora thing, there’s some thinking as to whether highly processed foods might be metabolised differently, and taken up by the body in different ways. Potentially, refined carbs like sugar and white bread might go more to stored fat, whereas other nutrients go to other things, or pass through.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
The studies are suggesting, though, that the bigger effect from eating better is the improvement in the balance of gut bacteria. Eat garbage, bugger up your gut flora and face the consequences, including obesity and, possible depression. There isn’t yet, AFAICT, a link between bad diet, unhealthy gut flora and voting Brexit, but I’d not be surprised ;)
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Oh Steve, you didn’t need those final 8 words, the rest of your post gets a thumbs up though. And your dry wit in others!

On the topic generally, it feels right that the young obese get their jab first as vulnerable, but part of you pinches yourself and says hang on a minute, be disciplined, watch your weight and make those relentless boring efforts mentioned earlier and go to the back of the queue as a reward.

and on obesity, one mate of mine swears that much of it started from the preaching of low fat diet, because sugar and carbs is cheaper to produce and higher margin so the industry loves it, and the medical industry sponsored by the pharmaceuticals loves selling its products too ie. it doesn’t really want us to follow prevention rather than cure.

I don’t know about that but was chatting to another mate early this morning and chewing over the point about habits, choice and availability inherited from our parents and how buying and take away habits is largely the incredible amount of choice from processed, instant, ready made, non-seasonal, sandwiches and snacks, access to finance (as opposed to actually having the money) that wasn’t there in the past.

I agree with the comments earlier that we have to work really hard on discipline and sustainable habits.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
You’re assuming though that the obesity is caused by increased intake. The type of food we consume has changed, at least in places like the U.K. and USA, where the problem seems more acute. It may not be as simple as: calories in - calories out = net weight change. Going back to the gut flora thing, there’s some thinking as to whether highly processed foods might be metabolised differently, and taken up by the body in different ways. Potentially, refined carbs like sugar and white bread might go more to stored fat, whereas other nutrients go to other things, or pass through.
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Right. I'm reading a nice review (unfortunately behind a paywall) on it and here's a quote:

"Traditional diets mainly made from unprocessed and minimally processed food and even when mixed with group 2 substances usually have adequate nutrient and energy density [25]. Compared to traditional diet, ultra-processed products are more energy dense; have more added simple sugars (six times higher than food from groups 1 and 2), sodium and saturated fat and are low in dietary fibre (half compared to food from groups 1 and 2) [27•, 30]. In Canada, dietary patterns dominated by ultra-processed food exceeded World Health Organization recommendations (designed to prevent and control obesity) for fat, sugar and sodium, and are low on dietary fibre [27•]. Evidence from three prospective cohorts including 120.877 American women and men shows that weight gain over a 4-year period is associated with consumption of various processed foods (such as potato chips, French fried potatoes, sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats) and inversely associated with consumption of unprocessed food (however, not using the classification system mentioned above) [31]."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13679-016-0233-8

Unfortunately, to support the idea that we are also eating more, they only cite the other article that I just linked (with the shoddy data analysis).
 
Paul L said:
...
and on obesity, one mate of mine swears that much of it started from the preaching of low fat diet, because sugar and carbs is cheaper to produce and higher margin so the industry loves it, and the medical industry sponsored by the pharmaceuticals loves selling its products too ie. it doesn’t really want us to follow prevention rather than cure.
...
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Plus, longer shelf life, and packaging which is designed to resonate with the consumer.
Eg, innocent smoothies have simple packaging, to support their simple theme, but the product is loaded with sugars.

Nothing wrong with fat in the right amount, and when part of a balanced diet IMO.
 
The concept of a low fat diet never felt right to me. When we eat food, we metabolise it into other things that we need. The idea that if we consume fat we get fat seems to fly in the face of this, because it assumes that the fat isn’t broken down, but is merely stored as-is. That seems ridiculous, because if I eat sausages, I don’t lay down layers of pig fat, any fat I have is human fat.
 
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