And to add to your right on the money comment we:

- eat too much
- eat too late
- eat processed foods
- eat to few fruits and veggies
- eat HFCS and partially-hydrogenated foods
- eat too little fiber

You are missing the obvious answer. To much time trolling the internet (and forums) and not enough in the gym.

Jumping Jesus son - you used the 2,500 cal number specifically using the Supersize Me example and comparing it to Will's mythical diet, you said he wasn't exercising - unless you provide a credible source that states otherwise, just man up and admit you're wrong twice in one paragraph.

Oh, and that you can't spell "hightheif".

PS: You don't get better mileage on higher octane fuel. You may get a tiny bit more horsepower, you may have a vehicle for which 93 octane is recommended rather than 89 or 87, but generally no more fuel efficiency. Another faulty bit of reasoning on your part.

(ok little threadjack - if you try to view the poll before you vote, the names of who voted for what appears below the choice....weird! /threadjack)

I think there should be more options on the poll.
One important one for me would be:

Maybe there is too much variety of everything these days and it's hard to switch off

One of the choices, the stress one, hints at something but not quite - we haven't got enough time to sit down properly for a meal a lot of the time, or to cook one. We work longer hours and have less time to do things at a more relaxed pace. Consequently we cook healthy food less, there is way too much take-out, and we don't even have time to eat slowly so our brains know we're full.

Oh my god. Even Wikipedia says he walked at least 1.5 miles a day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_...#Super_Size_Me
So which Wiki is right? It says the same thing about 1.5 miles in the movie.

Wiki has never been and will never be a credible source. Go watch the movie if you want that.
Most vehicles made after the mid 90s (or a vast majority on the street) require above 87 octane, therefore higher octane does mean better mileage.

Regardless of your incorrect points above, the argument in question (all calories are burned equal) is still bogus. That's the bottom line. People need to understand that if they're thinking about changing their lifestyle to be more healthy. Eat right—lower carb fruits and veggies, lean meats, nuts, and the occasional dairy—, and exercise—at least 30 minutes of cardio every day, though hitting the gym is best. That's the whole story.

We have no idea of what the word diet is.

We over eat.

We dont sleep enough.

We have NO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

Gladly I am able to say I am not anywhere even near fat. I am nicely where I should be and in good physical shape.

Fat is an excuse for most.

Just eat right, exercise (yes make time damnit, you're life > work.) and sleep well.

If most people did that the only fatties left would be the extreme rare cases where its medical related or other non-standard stuff.

That is definitely not what I've read and even been told by professionals.

Most newer cars make no difference with the higher octanes. And I mean its so marginal its not worth the extra cost what so ever.

Cars today are built MUCH more efficient than those older models (90's earlier).

They are specifically built for the 87 octane and do not require anything higher to perform as they are built for.

I suggest researching that one a bit, otherwise keep on the good work you typically do.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about - stuff like this is why people can't lose weight. "It's ok, eat breakfast, eat 'til your belly is full!"

I actually am absolutely starving if I DO eat breakfast, it catalyzes my appetite to the point of ordering a pizza at 9:30 AM. If I skip breakfast, I just feel normal, and get hungry around 11:00 AM.

And everyone saying all this crap about "what you eat depends on how much weight you lose! 87 octane is more efficient etc.!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yeah, there is healthy food and there's bad food, and some calories are burned easier and more efficient, but the bottom line is: if you eat more than you burn you are fucked.

I can prove it because I ate like I was Father Nutrition himself for 4 months, very strict diet of fruits and veggies and lean meats and poultry, and went to the gym EVERY SINGLE DAY for one hour, and lost 5 lbs. My cholesterol improved more than my dietition had every seen in 4 months, my blood pressure got slightly better.

Then I just started eating less, WAY less, and being less strict on what I ate - and lost the remaining 55 lbs nearly without going to the gym at all.

McDonald's versus fruit, your choice, but at the end of the day, you can eat fruit and veggies and healthy all day and gain weight. My parents are constantly complaining about being overweight even though they are "eating right" as I watch them pile on 2000 calories of vegetables and lean meat onto their plates at dinner.

In order to lose weight fast, you have to starve yourself. You got into the mess of being fat, now get yourself out - stop eating.

Once you are down to your correct weight, feel free to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and have a well-balanced diet. But until then, reduce the calories you eat so your body burns the excess fat - doesn't matter what you eat, just stop eating.

I apologize for being so blunt and slightly overzealous with this argument but I am trying to stand up for all the people who have been fed bullshit about losing weight for years, just like me. The key to losing weight is to burn more than you use, and it's extremely difficult to burn the average consumption of a normal person - that's why most people maintain, but don't lose weight, even if they exercise.

Once you're down to your ideal weight and you start eating a normal amount again you're going to gain weight. This is because the human body has been naturally selected to compensate for a situation where it thinks your food supply has suddenly been limited. Your body adjusts and when you go back to normal mode it's still in starvation mode. This is why under-eating is not a weight loss technique that's recommended by most dietitians. It's not bullshit, it's reality.

If you want to lose weight fast, chop off your arm. Losing weight fast almost always means you're not doing it in a healthy way. If you want to lose weight correctly, consult a dietitian and a personal trainer so they can provide you with tested and proven methods.

Um.... that's how metabolism works. You eat breakfast? Your metabolism will want you to eat again. You skip breakfast? Your metabolism continues in fasting mode, if it doesn't go into starvation mode.

What were you eating for breakfast? I thought I was bad eating a ton for breakfast and then eying the clock at 10:30, waiting for 11:00 to roll around so I can tear into my first lunch. But ordering pizza at 9:30 after breakfast?

Look, there are many ways to lose weight, but the way to do so healthily and over the long term is to eat breakfast and understand that doing so will fire up your metabolism. That's they way your body works, so figure it out.

If you want to fast for over 16 hours each and every day, then fine. But I'm more or less responding to you for the benefit of the thread and other readers. That and maybe because you don't quite understand how fasting and metabolism works.

Any nutritionist/dietitian/GP worth their weight will tell you the same thing.

I vote for "maybe we're too lazy?"

Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Sprite, A&W Root Beer, etc.

Take a fat kid, cut ALL soft drinks out of his diet and watch him slim down, even if no other diet/exercise changes are made.

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I've heard horror stories of what kids are bringing in their lunches these days. Lunches? Well, sometimes they're way cooler: they're Lunchables.

Refined Carbs, and shit lots of them, combined with less and less exercise. And beer.

Read a book called 'The Diet Delusion' by Gary Taubes. It completly changed the way i think about the modern diet and all the ailments that accompany it.

I, like many of you, just could not vote. None of the choices were my response, they seemed more like excuses,but I think that was the point.

Anyway, in my own life I know I cannot lose weight without exercise. Period. I cannot maintain a healthy weight without some sort of exercise/activity in my life. I eat pretty well all the time, I love most healthy foods and enjoy cooking, and found found ways to cook healthy foods quickly. However, I can not resist candy, cookies, and cake, I don't buy them often but sometimes I am exposed to them and find resisting impossible. But my daily activities and exercises keep my body in check. BTW, I am still loosing weight after my second baby and I am doing it the healthily way so it takes awhile, but I see steady decreases in my weight and increases in my health. (Unfortunately I was on bed rest for both of my pregnancies, and craved junk food so I did not get to maintain my healthy eating or my exercising which caused more weight gain and harder weight loss than I wanted.)

But after the second and final baby I am back to eating well and exercising. Some people think that all exercise has to be running on a treadmill at a gym, that is not true. Exercise can be taking the kids to the zoo. Walking briskly around the mall "window shopping", swimming with the family, taking walks in the park, running around the backyard with the kids, walking to the bars, walking to the bus stop, walking to work, walking the dog, walking on your smoke break (hubby does that, I'm a recovered smoker), walking up and down the stairs caring loads of laundry, and so much more. I am one of those weirdos that loves going to the gym, but I don't always make it there because of childcare issues, yet there are tons of things I can do that I also enjoy that give me my needed exercise/activity level.

I am not a lazy person, IMO, I do spend a lot of time on the computer for work, and I work at home, but I am still quite active.

Let's think back to the beginning of time, human beings evolved to walk upright and walk all over the place. Are we fat because we have cars? No, I am just saying our bodies were made for walking, plain and simple it is in our genetics. IMO if we don't move our bodies like they were made to be moved we will suffer the consequences ie. be overweight.

Congrats to anyone who can loose weight without exercise, :bowdown: I know I can't.

I think another VERY significant contributor to obesity in humans is the way we eat.

First, most people eat way too fast, which tends to lead to over-eating. I read or heard once that the brain doesn't receive the "I'm full" message from the belly for about 20 minutes after the belly has actually gotten sufficiently full. If you continue to eat during this period, you'll over-eat and then feel "stuffed". (I don't know if there's any scientific merit to this notion, but it does jibe with my own experiences.) The solution to this problem is to slow down and enjoy your meal. You'll eat less and be less likely to feel uncomfortably full.

Another problem is the whole idea of the 3 square meals per day. I got to thinking about this while out deer hunting one time. I was thinking about obesity and wondered why, even in a food-rich environment, you never see wild animals that are fat (hibernating animals such as bear excepted, of course). And it occurred to me that, aside from the fact that most animals get way more exercise than most humans, there is a noticeable difference between how animals and humans eat. Unless they are sleeping or rutting, animals are ALWAYS eating. But they're just grazing. A little here, a little there, usually with some walking (and scanning the area for danger) in between. You almost never see a deer, or other animal, gorge himself the way humans do on a regular basis.

So, if you really want to eat in a healthier way, consider looking to nature for your example. Now granted, deer (the source of inspiration for my thoughts) have different nutritional needs than humans. But there are plenty of animals that are omnivores like we are. Many of the primate species (baboons come to mind) eat both meat and plant matter and would likely serve as an excellent model for the human diet.

When in doubt, look to nature.

These are some of the things I don't often think about, in terms of my eating--I just do it, because I have to. I have GERD (acid reflux disease)--or had it--pretty severely, to the point of being in constant pain. I wouldn't, couldn't eat because it literally hurt to eat. I could only stomach Clif bars for a while there, and had to force myself to eat them. But with the help of some great medication and weight loss, I was able to heal my stomach to the point where now preventative measures ensure that I don't have flare-ups often (unless I forget to eat). But for the sake of my tummy, I almost always have to have something in it. I can't eat big meals, either, because that makes reflux worse, and a flare-up more likely. Same with eating too fast. Can't eat meals with a lot of fat, either. So I eat lots of tiny but healthy meals/snacks. I like to read a newspaper while I eat--forces me to eat more slowly.

Woah, there are people who only eat three meals a day?

I'd go nuts on only three....

Simple: it's the wussification of America. People are no longer responsible or accountable to themselves. It's always someone else's fault. I notice there is no option in the poll for: Too much caloric input not enough caloric output.

We eat too much and don't exercise enough. That's it.

It comes down to eating and exercise/active lifestyles. It is also a lot easier to maintain a healthy weight if you eat good food instead of fast food growing up. Losing weight takes more effort than staying the same 'good' weight.

But, temperature is something that I think could be a minor factor. I know I eat less in the hot summer than I do in the winter. I drink more water in the summer though.

Maybe we should stop asking a hypothetical why, and just start taking some personal responsibility for our weight issues.

Around here in SoCal suburbia, it's either you eat too little, enjoy working out, or you're obese. There are few in between.

It would be interesting to see the statistics that would come out of obesity in our next census.

I think what gets lost in this debate is the systemic causes, things like the way our neighborhoods and communities are structured, the way our food is priced and subsidized, the way our days are structured, the discontinuation of phys ed classes, etc. All subtle things that drive personal choices in a particular direction. This doesn't absolve people, but screaming about fat lazy people with no discipline doesn't make a difference. There are neighborhood and community effects on obesity - i.e., if you live in a particular community you're more likely to be obese because of factors in that community, like access to healthy food (how far is the local supermarket vs. the corner convenience store stocked with processed food?) Are there sidewalks and parks available?

How do you make PUBLIC POLICY choices that drive personal choices one way or another? How about making healthy calories cheaper and more available? Subsidizing local farmers markets? Adding sidewalks and bike lanes to neighborhoods? How about rewarding being at a healthy BMI by lowering insurance premiums?

If you're serious about making a difference on a large scale (no pun intended) then the discussion has to continue past blaming the individual. The answer is OBVIOUSLY individual behavior, but how do you shape that behavior at the societal level?

I think it's 75% eating too much and 25% not exercising. Many people believe it's flip flopped but in reality it's what you eat that causes your fatness.

We are growing fat for the fall harvest.

I'm not so sure that we should be trying to shape individual behavior through public policy. I don't believe that the Nanny State idea is a good one.

"That government is best which governs the least." - Thomas Jefferson

When I clicked on this thread this is the first thing that popped up.

You never fail to make me laugh GH.

We're fat, because despite trying to eat healthy and maintain a healthy lifestyle, we acquire girlfriends whose mothers and stepmothers find the need to cook horrendously unhealthy, mouthwateringly delicious meals for lunch and dinner, and then practically force feed them to us.

I have lost almost 50lbs in the last year by doing virtually nothing but changing what and how much I eat. I still don't eat extremely healthy, but I did cut waaaaay back on soft drinks, and fast food. We recently joined the YMCA as a family and I'm doing about 15 min. of Cardio, about 1/2 an hour of weight machines and about an hour of swimming/ playing in the pool a couple times per week, but nothing too intense.

And I think that we are setting up people to become fat. It isn't easy to be fit and be able to choose to eat healthy food versus unhealthy food. If society has a health problem, and companies aren't stepping up to fix it, the government needs to step in and adjust some things.

There is/was this TV show on TLC or Discovery Health or something that took a family with kids that were heavy for their age and then showed them what they would look like at age 40 if they continued to eat what they ate and not be physically active. They were able to change their lives after that because they realize what would happen to them. But day by day, you don't see weight changes that much and certain food tastes better, is cheaper or is the only thing available.

Or maybe it is because my parents acted as my 'nanny state' and said, if you eat all that sugar and sweets you will end up looking like that fat man over there when you are 30. If you eat healthy food you can look like that one.

You can not legislate stupidity, or stupid behavior, away.


Btw, there is a HUGE difference between parenting and governing.

What happened to people taking personal responsibility and accountability for themselves? People need to take charge of their own lives and not rely on government to bail them out. Time to pull yourselves by the bootstraps people.

I am guessing that we are fat because we dont take enough drugs, smoke enough cigarettes, the weather is too cold, and we eat far to many carrotts, and jog.

Yeah, that's working SO well! :rolleyes:

Allright, all you "nanny-state" naysayers....what's your solution? Besides "people ought to take responsibility" Blah blah blah. That's a very nice prescription...so how do you make it happen?

The President's Council on Fitness is now giving out those patches to adults. Maybe that'll turn things around.

One thing I didn't see mentioned here is that
calorie in vs calorie out
is NOT the same as
calorie in vs. calorie used

Just like Will and others stated, type of food has a huge impact.
calorie in vs calorie out
is more accurately(though still quite simplified)
calorie in vs calorie spent + calorie excreted + calorie stored

Certain types of foods break down at different rates at different times in the digestive system. Some are completely wasted out. Some take more calories to digest than they provide, like carrots and celery I believe. etc.

Bottom line, it isn't as simple as some suggest.
-----Added 23/7/2008 at 10 : 56 : 03-----
Ha. I could never got one of those in primary school. I doubt I could now either.

I'd like to speak in specifics at this point.

Another reason why we're fat is because too many people only drink things like green tea only after it's been ruined by soft drink companies.

Another reason is because we no longer look at food and its preparation as a spiritual or pleasurable experience; we look at it as a chore, and so we look for convenience.

Another reason is because we don't understand cause and effect over a certain period of time. Immediate gratification is best understood, and as each second passes beyond that, it's as though the effect is shot into outer space.

Another reason is because we would rather pay for something rather than do it or make it ourselves.

Another reason is because we don't understand food. Adding fibre to a milkshake doesn't make it good for you.

Another reason is because we've adjusted our tastes to prefer what's bad for us, and we've pushed the good food out of our realm of what we find pleasurable. As an example, I used to put salt and fat on everything; now I prefer things such as vegetables with herbs, if not "au naturel."

You don't. People will either take responsibility for themselves or they won't. But as long as government is there to bail them out every time they fuck up...most people aren't likely to change their stupid ways.

Agreed.

Lurky, Incentives might help. Higher rates and taxes for unhealthy people because they refuse to become healthy and are a drain on the health care system. EX: Higher taxes and rates for smokers, fat people etc.

Education on health and nutrition is also a good idea. Other than that, it's just good ol' fashioned will power and discipline.

What about smokers and fat people who aren't a burden to the health care system? What about the non-smokers and skinny people who make lifestyle choices that are a burden?

You'd have to tax based on doctor's reports because there are many people who are otherwise healthy looking who have hearts that are ticking time bombs due to dietary choices and lack of exercise. There are "fat" people who almost never go to the doctor's and are otherwise healthy. Much of this is genetics, so I see a problem with such a system of "incentives."

How far would we have to go to ensure it's "fair"?

Fair questions Baraka. But for me, it's a starting point or at the very least, a discussion worth having. You could merge this with some sort of basic national health care program.

The main problem as you suggest is the establishment of standards. I would assume, basic rule of thumbs would be a place to begin. EX: Healthy range for blood pressure is 120/80, BMI ranges, cholesterol etc.

Smokers should be treated the same in my opinion because it affects everyone.