On Fri, 3 Aug 2012 01:21:24 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:


The principle anchors the comforting American belief that personal
responsibility explains all of our ills.

If personal responsibility worked you could go to the mall and not see
fat people.

I don't know exactly what you mean by that, Doug. How does "personal
responsibility" not work?

What he means and which I agree with is that clearly it usually
doesn't work in practice.

What? Are you psychic, too?

Personal responsibility works. I don't know how taking responsibility
for your weight problem wouldn't work. By definition, taking
responsibility for it means you will succeed.

A lot of people try to excercise personal
responsibility when it comes to dieting.

If they were taking responsibility, it would work. It stops working
when they stop taking responsibility.

They try a variety
of diets and still fail because in the end, it's very difficult.

It can be difficult, but that's what taking responsibility means. You
do the difficult things as well as the easy ones.

And choosing say a low fat diet instead of a low carb one just
makes it a lot harder.

There are all kinds of ways to make it harder, but if one takes
responsibility, he or she will eventually find something that works.

Throwing one's hands in the air and giving up is the personification
of not taking responsibility.

On the other hand, either you accept
personal responsibility for your actions, or you don't. Those who do,
don't usually have these problems.

That's like saying if you fall into a well, personal
responsibility will get you out.

Who do you think will get out of the well fastest? The guy who sits
on his hands and does nothing? Or the guy who tries and tries to find
different ways to climb out, screams loudly, etc?

In the movie "127 Hours," a true story, the rock climber fell into a
crevasse out in the middle of nowhere. His arm was wedged into the
rocks, and he couldn't escape. He created ways to trap rain water, to
survive on. When he ran out of ways to escape, food, water, etc., and
realized that no one was coming for him, he accepted responsibility
for getting himself out. He cut off his own arm with his knife, tied
off the stub, and proceeded to hike his way out. He eventually came
across some hikers, and they called for help and he was flown out by
helicopter.

He lived, because he took responsibility for saving his live. Had he
sat on his hands and did nothing, he would have died.

Humans instinctively crave food that is carby, fat and salty. *The carby
part is addictive so products stress carbs. *Chemicals other than sodium
chloride can be added to alt to increase appetite. *Companies don't even
have to have a deliberate plan to take advantage of these instinctive
cravings. *All companies need to do is make more of the products that
sell better, make less of the products that sell worse, keep trying
variations on products to continue development to incrase profitability.
Any product that hits the instinctive human cravings will sell better.
Any product that triggers addictive behavior patterns will sell better.
The market will tune the rest until we have vast numbers of fat people
even wtihout any intent for that to happen.

Well, you've identified the problem, but...

Yes the problem for you is that Doug apparently doesn't
buy your vast evil conspiracy theory either. Companies are
simply producing the products that people want. It';s
how the free market works.

I figured that was common knowledge by now.

But that's not taking responsibility for your own health. If one takes
resonibility for one's own health, it shouldn't/doesn't matter what
certain companies make. To the best of my knowledge, no one with a gun
is forcing people to eat fast food, sugar, refined and processed
foods, etc.

It validates all that wasted
time on the treadmill that people like Kolata and others endorse.

Exercise is beneficial for other reasons.

You bet. *But it doesn't really help anyone lose weight, and can even
help to increase your weight, chance of injury, etc.

Which of course is nonsense. That's your problem in general.
You take something that has a bit of validity and then run it out
to extremes, turn it into nonsense, and disregard the mountain of
evidence that says you're wrong.

There is a mountain of evidence out there, anecdotal and scientific,
that suggests that exercising simply to lose weight is essentially a
waste of time. If you don't eat properly, you can exercise until the
cows come how, and you won't lose much if any weight. If you're
exercising properly, you're probably building muscle. Muscle weighs
more than fat, so you're probably going to gain weight, not lose it.

Again, this is something that you can prove to yourself, and pretty
easily.

You brought up The Biggest Loser show. What exactly
is going on there? They are losing weight at fantastic
rates on a variety of diets and a lot of it is because they
are excercising at levels few ordinary folks would ever
reach.

Exactly! No one is going to do that!

They also have a huge support and motivation
system that almost no one else excercising "personal
responsibility" has.

Exactly! And no one is going to have that.

That's where personal responsibility comes in.

Maybe you should try excersice
and see the effects. I have and it works.

Yes, it works, but it doesn't make you lose weight. It just makes you
hungrier, then you eat more food, and losing weight becomes that much
harder.

Better to lose
the weight first, primarily through diet and very moderate (safe)
exercise, then, once the weight is lost, decide on what kind of
exercise is right for you.

First you argue that excercise doesn't do any good
and can make you gain weight, now you're endorsing
some excercise.

Of course I endorse exercise, you moron! But not to lose weight! We
should exercise to become more fit, etc.

The vast majority of us are not even fit enough to exercise, because
we're so overweight that anything but walking short distances is
dangerous to our joints, our heart, etc.

I don't know of any health authority
that says excercise has to be "very moderate" for
the typical person trying to lose weight. You have a
source for that?

Find me a "health authority" who suggests that a seriously obese man
can do anything but moderate exercise! Seriously obese people can
barely walk, much less enter a CrossFit competition. So they should
focus on their diets (which is hard enough to do, without adding
insult to injury, by trying to strenuously exercise, too), and try to
get at least some exercise, but not enough to injure themselves.
Injury just makes people give up altogether.

It keeps us watching shows like The Biggest Loser.

Think of how these folks work. *When they are not doing other exercise
they are on treadmills to fill out 16 hour days. *it comes down to "A
marathon is a pound of fat". *They keep these folks doing at least that
much work every day. *They do it to the exclusion of their jobs and away
from their families. *They don't do it as their "job". *They do it as
their "life".

Yeah, and it's sad to watch.

Then don't watch it.

You don't get to tell me what to do, Pusher Man.

But don't come in here and
claim that it doesn't work during the course of the
show.

I can do whatever I want to do, and you can't do **** about it, Little
Man.

If you think Biggest Loser is a reflection of what goes on in the Real
World, you're even more delusional than I figured.

It leaves the door
open to low-calorie, high-carbohydrate food products that make the
economy hum, are portable, do not require we learn to cook, make
children stop crying, and taste good. Any efforts at reporting science
to the contrary will always have a rough road."

And all that industry need do is observe what sells well, make more of
it, and advertise it. *No ulterior motives othe than profit are needed.

Yep. *GREED kills.

Yes, and greed has also produced everything from all
the drugs that have saved the lives of hundreds of millions to the
iPhone.

I don't know. Subtract all the people it harmed or killed from the
people it helped, and it's probably a wash.

But the point is, it KILLS. It's indisputable. And if you don't take
responsibility for your own health, it'll likely KILL you, too.

See: Darwin, and natural selection.

--
Dogman

"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty
about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything" - Richard Feynman