Oh, brother (I roll my eyes)

"Jonathan Ball" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Rubystars wrote:

"Jonathan Ball" wrote in message
hlink.net...



They could have metabolic problems that cause them to gain even if they
eat like a normal person. Some people have a genetic disposition toward
being fat that's hard to get past.

Sorry. This is simply not true.


I think some people have more of a natural tendency than others.

I don't doubt that two people can have very different
*resting* metabolisms. That isn't what we're talking
about, or at least shouldn't be.

It can be the resting metabolism that makes all the difference, when the
vast majority of Americans don't do regular exercise.

This can be
seen in families who don't have bad eating habits but still nearly every
member of the family is big, even the young children. My sister had a
friend
whose family was like that. They were all huge (not fat, huge), even
though
they were all trying very hard. It could have been a gland problem that
ran
in the family, etc.

It's conceivable that some ONE person might have a
hormonal issue. That can't possibly explain the
terrible incidence of severe, morbid obesity in the
U.S. versus, say, continental Europe. The Germans are
pretty stout people, but you simply don't see those
extremely obese people there that you see in the
American "heartland".

Yeah, I think most people are big for lifestyle reasons, and nothing else,
but my point originally was that it's not necessarily a lie when someone
says that they're eating a small amount and still gaining or maintaining a
large weight.

Snip
There is nothing contradictory in the notion that
adding 20-30 minutes of vigorous physical exercise to
your daily routine, and cutting your caloric intake by
15-20%, will make you lose weight.

That's very specific information. How much BS did you have to sift through
to find it? There's a diet plan being advertized on tv right now that's
called the "Body Makeover" or something similar, where people take photos of
themselves, mark on them with markers to indicate where they want to change,
and then do a miniscule amount of exercise every day (much less than 20-30
minutes). The more reliable information I've come across indicates that the
claims of that infomercial are bogus, you can't spot-reduce fat, you can
only tone muscle groups in certain areas. The infomercial decleares "Eat
more!" (as if that's really something an overeater needs to do anyway!) and
"Exercise less!" (that's really a bad message to send, especially for long
term health).

How is someone supposed to know that commercial is bogus though? Most people
aren't exactly biology majors. You can say 20-30 minutes and cut calories,
but then someone else is telling them something completely opposite to that.
So how is the average person supposed to distinguish who is lying and who's
telling the truth, especially when the lie is so much more appealing?

It also is absurd to suggest that morbidly obese people
aren't aware of the issue. EVERYONE is aware of it,
and of the basic commonsense that must be internalized:
reduce caloric intake, increase caloric expenditure,
lose weight. It really is that simple. Morbid obesity
is SOLELY a function of behavior, not family tendencies.

I think that in some people it is family genetics alone, or both in
combination. In the vast majority of overweight people though (most, not
all) you're right.

snip
They may not even know they have a problem with portion control until
they
get really big,

Come on, now. They know they have SOME kind of problem
when their clothes stop fitting them and their friends
begin needling them about packing on a lot of weight.

They know they have a *weight* problem, they may not necessarily know they
have a portion control problem. They may think that eating a huge portion of
potatoes will help them lose weight instead of eating a huge portion of
steak, because potatoes are lower in fat. They may think eating a box of
sugary Snack Wells cookies will help them lose weight instead of eating a
package of chips a hoy. Some of these changes might help a little, but they
don't address the issue of portion control.

and then they're bombarded with different people trying to
take their money away to fix the overweight problem, without fixing the
issue that caused it. They may never learn what a regular sized portion
is
unless they take the time to find out that specific information.

That information is readily available. One must WANT
to find it and learn from it.

And search for it until they find it, and then sift through BS. When you
have infomercials constantly telling people "Eat all you want! and lose 10
lbs. in 5 days!" it can be confusing for people.

It's extremely easy to gain weight, and it's difficult to lose it.

It sure is. I just read something about the
documentary "Super Size Me"
(http://www.supersizeme.com/) The guy ate nothing but
McDonald's food for a month in order to make the film,
and his rule was that if the counterperson ever asked
him did he want to "supersize" something, he had to do
it. He gained 25 pounds in ONE MONTH! It took him six
months of supervised weight loss to lose 20 pounds, and
another NINE MONTHS to lose the final five pounds.

Yeah, it's frustrating.

The asymmetry between the ease of weight gain and the
difficulty of weight loss is NOT a legitimate excuse,
however, although lots of seriously obese people try to
use it as one. Also, the asymmetry is not some
craftily concealed fact that someone "doesn't want you
to know". It's very well known.

I'm not saying it's a legit excuse (it's not), just saying it's a lot easier
to talk about losing weight than to actually do it. That's one reason I
think people are so big in the U.S. Not only are we constantly bombarded
with food ads (heck, I can't watch the news without commercials telling me
about the wonders of Domino's Pizza, Taco Bell, Golden Corral, Hartz Chicken
Buffet, etc.) that can trigger cravings, but there's a double whammy with
all the distorted, wrong, and dangerous diet information being pushed in
people's faces.

It takes
no effort at all to gain, it can take monumental effort to lose. So they
spend their money and time on a bunch of fad diets and just get bigger
and
bigger and in the mean time they never really learn how much they should
eat, etc.

Again, this information is readily available. One must
first want to know.

And then take the effort to sift through the BS.

Besides, a lot of people who are big do cut down their intake of food a
lot in order to try to be healthier, and it doesn't always work.

If you cut your caloric intake to something less than
your caloric expenditure, you NECESSARILY will lose
weight.


Yes, burning more calories than you consume sounds pretty easy, doesn't
it?

It IS easy. It may not be easy to make it into a large
difference, but a small net expenditure is EASY to attain.

Well if someone wants to take 10 years to get to goal weight, maybe.

It's not.

It is.

It's hard to make a change significant enough to see the results within a
reasonable time.

In order to do that you have to know how much you can eat, how
many calories you can eat and still lose, what are good types of
exercise
(walking, for example).

All of that information is readily available.

So is a lot of BS.

Some people cut their food intake, but not enough,
or are eating smaller portions of high calorie foods, and they are
frustrated because they're unsatisified with the portions they eat but
still
gain weight.

I mean, let's say someone ate 2 patio burritos for lunch every day,
heated
up in the microwave with melted cheese over it. They cut it down to one
burrito.

DROP THE CHEESE!

Easy to say, you know what you're talking about. The "Food pyramid" tells
people to get 2 servings of dairy, so some people think cheese like that is
part of a balanced diet.

They still might not lose weight or stop gaining because it may not
be enough of a drop in calories/fat intake to help them.

This is why it's important to increase caloric
expenditure as well. It doesn't take much. A
beginner's walking speed is apparently 3.0-3.2 mph
(http://www.classicalmusicfitness.com/speed.htm). At
3.0 mph, you'll walk one mile in 20 minutes. For most
seriously obese people, those 20 minutes would be the
ONLY 20 minutes of additional exercise they get. It
isn't a lot, but it's a start. It simply is not a
believable excuse that they don't have the 20 minutes
to spend.

I agree that everyone should *make time* for exercise. It's probably the
most important thing out of any of this.

The caloric intake and the caloric expenditure
are highly variable, and people who cut their caloric
intake but don't lose weight NECESSARILY are still
consuming more in calories than they burn.


Yes that's true! It's just that it takes effort and research

Very, very little. If a person can't find that out in
half an hour or less, s/he just doesn't want to know.

That's not really fair. They're given a large amount of information, most of
it untrue. I would bet money on the hunch that people even offer
"reflexology" for weight loss.

In 2-3 hours of research, you should have enough
information to last a LIFETIME. Since we're talking
about something that has virtually an incalculable
effect on quality of life AND duration of life, that
seems like a pittance of time.

You're assuming 2-3 hours of productive research. You're not counting the
time spent looking at hypnotist sites, trying various diets from tv, etc.

-Rubystars

"Rubystars" wrote in message
snip
I would bet money on the hunch that people even offer
"reflexology" for weight loss.

Sure enough, I found a site:
http://www.holistic-online.com/Remed...eflexology.htm

More BS:
http://www.bodyandhealthessentials.c...m_slippers.htm

"Using reflexology science, magnets, and laws of gravity to get slim!"

The site also claims:
"What if I told you that there is a way to lose weight without joining a gym
or changing your eating habits? Get Slim Slippers are the way, to be worn
daily for a short period of time."

and then there's this stupid site:
http://www.erbook.net/lose_weight_wi... r_surgery.htm

it has this stupid paragraph in it:

"Perhaps you're skeptical, and scoff at the notion that it is possible to
lose weight without dieting, drugs, herbs, exercise, or surgery. My
response? We live in a world in which scientific breakthroughs are common.
People who resolutely adhere to the old dogma are sometimes nominated for
membership in the Flat Earth Society. However, it is natural to question the
validity of weight loss claims because most weight loss "breakthroughs" are
overhyped nonsense. This is different. It works."

ALL of them claim "This is different. It works."


-Rubystars

True, but what your body and my body do with those calories may differ.

In link.net,
Jonathan Ball stated
|
| A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. "Calorie" is an
| OBJECTIVE unit of energy. If there is one chocolate
| eclair on a table in front of us, and some referee
| randomly picks you or me to eat the eclair, it provides
| the same number of calories to you as it would to me.

"Dawn Taylor" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 May 2004 11:23:39 GMT, "Gooserider"
announced in front of God and everybody:

Of course. It doesn't matter if the calories consumed are from ice cream
or
brussels sprouts.

Actually, it does make a difference, depending on the individual.
People who are diabetic and/or insulin resistant have a different
reaction to simple carbohydrates than non-IR people.

A calorie is a calorie is a kilocalorie. However, not every person can
extract the same amount of calories from a given quantity of food.

having been vegan for 6 years and involved in animal rights for a decade, i have
to say that peta really making it embarrassing to say so at times. i know the
leaders of the german peta organization, and have no idea why they keep rolling
out one stupid media stunt after the other. they seem to think that any
publicity is good - well - i disagree and wish they would finally cut rhe crap.

FOB wrote:

True, but what your body and my body do with those calories may differ.

Unfortunately, many people see it as a judgment call on them personally to
be told that weight loss is from a calorie deficit. Eating fewer calories
than *your body personally needs to maintain weight* (And it does differ
for everyone) is technically, what causes weight loss.

Even if one is insulin resistant, and a certain way of eating raises their
metabolism, and they've still lost weight, it's because at *some* given
point the calories burned has exceeded calories ingested over a period of
time. This does not contradict the idea that different people metabolize
foods differently and at different rates, and for different reasons.

--
The post you just read, unless otherwise noted, is strictly my opinion
and experience. Please interpret accordingly.

On Tue, 11 May 2004 19:30:40 GMT, "FOB" announced
in front of God and everybody:

True, but what your body and my body do with those calories may differ.

Stop trying -- he has no interest in facts. He's a cross-posting troll
trying to create another ASDLC/fat-acceptance/misc.consumers logjam.

Dawn

Rubystars wrote:

"Jonathan Ball" wrote in message
hlink.net...

Rubystars wrote:


"Jonathan Ball" wrote in message
arthlink.net...


They could have metabolic problems that cause them to gain even if they
eat like a normal person. Some people have a genetic disposition toward
being fat that's hard to get past.

Sorry. This is simply not true.


I think some people have more of a natural tendency than others.

I don't doubt that two people can have very different
*resting* metabolisms. That isn't what we're talking
about, or at least shouldn't be.


It can be the resting metabolism that makes all the difference, when the
vast majority of Americans don't do regular exercise.

IF an obese person wants to lose weight, the person
MUST figure out what the caloric count of various
possible meals is, and figure out what the caloric
expenditure of various forms and durations of exercise
is. It's that simple.

I believe I have a fairly high resting metabolism. I
have always eaten rather large meal portions, have
gotten less exercise as I've gotten older (but still
VASTLY more than the typical American), and I don't
gain weight. Without even NEEDING to investigate
portion size, however, my portions have gone down. I
had an easily intuitive sense that they needed to go
down as my level of exercise declined somewhat, and I
find I feel physically full on far less food than
before. I read no diet books, received no special
medical advice, was not the subject of any harangues in
order to do this. It just happened.



This can be
seen in families who don't have bad eating habits but still nearly every
member of the family is big, even the young children. My sister had a friend
whose family was like that. They were all huge (not fat, huge), even though
they were all trying very hard. It could have been a gland problem that ran
in the family, etc.

It's conceivable that some ONE person might have a
hormonal issue. That can't possibly explain the
terrible incidence of severe, morbid obesity in the
U.S. versus, say, continental Europe. The Germans are
pretty stout people, but you simply don't see those
extremely obese people there that you see in the
American "heartland".


Yeah, I think most people are big for lifestyle reasons, and nothing else,
but my point originally was that it's not necessarily a lie when someone
says that they're eating a small amount and still gaining or maintaining a
large weight.

It isn't necessarily a lie, but it's MOST LIKELY
untrue. It might be untrue because they're lying, or
it might be untrue because (as you've suggested) they
don't really know what a "small amount" is. MY point
is that very few morbidly obese people have some
medical abnormality that causes the obesity.


Snip

There is nothing contradictory in the notion that
adding 20-30 minutes of vigorous physical exercise to
your daily routine, and cutting your caloric intake by
15-20%, will make you lose weight.


That's very specific information. How much BS did you have to sift through
to find it?

ZERO. It's common sense.

If I had total control of a morbidly obese person's
life for one month, that person would lose 5-8 pounds
with ease, possibly more with a little bona fide sweat.

There's a diet plan being advertized on tv right now that's
called the "Body Makeover" or something similar, where people take photos of
themselves, mark on them with markers to indicate where they want to change,
and then do a miniscule amount of exercise every day (much less than 20-30
minutes). The more reliable information I've come across indicates that the
claims of that infomercial are bogus, you can't spot-reduce fat, you can
only tone muscle groups in certain areas. The infomercial decleares "Eat
more!" (as if that's really something an overeater needs to do anyway!) and
"Exercise less!" (that's really a bad message to send, especially for long
term health).

How is someone supposed to know that commercial is bogus though? Most people
aren't exactly biology majors. You can say 20-30 minutes and cut calories,
but then someone else is telling them something completely opposite to that.

Who?! Who is saying that reducing your food intake
somewhat, and increasing your exercise by 20-30 minutes
a day, WON'T result in weight loss? I mean, who other
than some moronic "fat acceptance" wackos?

So how is the average person supposed to distinguish who is lying and who's
telling the truth, especially when the lie is so much more appealing?

Look, life is FULL of little instances of proving "if
it sounds too good to be true, it undoubtedly isn't" to
be true. I'm sure a lot of morbidly obese people can
think of quite a lot of instances where they've said it
themselves, to someone else over a different issue.



It also is absurd to suggest that morbidly obese people
aren't aware of the issue. EVERYONE is aware of it,
and of the basic commonsense that must be internalized:
reduce caloric intake, increase caloric expenditure,
lose weight. It really is that simple. Morbid obesity
is SOLELY a function of behavior, not family tendencies.


I think that in some people it is family genetics alone,

Virtually never.

or both in
combination. In the vast majority of overweight people though (most, not
all) you're right.

snip

They may not even know they have a problem with portion control until

they

get really big,

Come on, now. They know they have SOME kind of problem
when their clothes stop fitting them and their friends
begin needling them about packing on a lot of weight.


They know they have a *weight* problem, they may not necessarily know they
have a portion control problem.

It's no big mystery. Weight gain is directly and
obviously tied to food intake. What determines food
intake? Number of meals times size of portions:

M x P

Now, they KNOW they aren't increasing M to, say, 8
meals per day. Therefore, it's mostly an increase in P
(although the old bugaboo "between-meal snacks" must be
considered.)

They may think that eating a huge portion of
potatoes will help them lose weight instead of eating a huge portion of
steak, because potatoes are lower in fat.

Thinking in terms of huge portions is a mistake right
off the line.

They may think eating a box of
sugary Snack Wells cookies will help them lose weight instead of eating a
package of chips a hoy. Some of these changes might help a little, but they
don't address the issue of portion control.


and then they're bombarded with different people trying to
take their money away to fix the overweight problem, without fixing the
issue that caused it. They may never learn what a regular sized portion
is unless they take the time to find out that specific information.

That information is readily available. One must WANT
to find it and learn from it.


And search for it until they find it, and then sift through BS.

In this age of the internet, and frequent news stories
about an obesity "epidemic", one need search neither
long nor hard. It's right there under their noses, or
at least it would be if a quarter-pounder-with-cheese
weren't already there.

When you
have infomercials constantly telling people "Eat all you want! and lose 10
lbs. in 5 days!" it can be confusing for people.

I automatically assume that all infomercials for health
care or health-related products - baldness cures,
flatulence, impotence - are bull****.



It's extremely easy to gain weight, and it's difficult to lose it.

It sure is. I just read something about the
documentary "Super Size Me"
(http://www.supersizeme.com/) The guy ate nothing but
McDonald's food for a month in order to make the film,
and his rule was that if the counterperson ever asked
him did he want to "supersize" something, he had to do
it. He gained 25 pounds in ONE MONTH! It took him six
months of supervised weight loss to lose 20 pounds, and
another NINE MONTHS to lose the final five pounds.


Yeah, it's frustrating.


The asymmetry between the ease of weight gain and the
difficulty of weight loss is NOT a legitimate excuse,
however, although lots of seriously obese people try to
use it as one. Also, the asymmetry is not some
craftily concealed fact that someone "doesn't want you
to know". It's very well known.


I'm not saying it's a legit excuse (it's not),

But lots of obese people USE it as one. I'll bet Dawn
Taylor does.

just saying it's a lot easier
to talk about losing weight than to actually do it.

It's a lot easier for me to talk about training to hike
up Mt. Whitney in August than actually to get outside
and DO some training, too, but realizing that all the
blather in the world in May won't help me a g.d. bit in
August, I went out and did a monster, "beastly" hike
last Saturday:
http://www.localhikes.com/Hikes/Bade...Islip_4472.asp.
It was damned hard even to get out there, too,
because the night before a friend in a lousy marriage
wanted to get together for a couple of drinks and I had
a bit too much to drink and only about 4 hours of
sleep, and felt hung-over as hell Saturday morning, but
I *did* the hike. No one was going to do it for me.

That's one reason I
think people are so big in the U.S.

People are so big in the U.S. because our culture
grotesquely values quantity over quality. That doesn't
mean people must accept the prevailing cultural
message. I rejected it in adult life, after growing up
believing that more and bigger was almost always better.

Not only are we constantly bombarded
with food ads (heck, I can't watch the news without commercials telling me
about the wonders of Domino's Pizza, Taco Bell, Golden Corral, Hartz Chicken
Buffet, etc.) that can trigger cravings, but there's a double whammy with
all the distorted, wrong, and dangerous diet information being pushed in
people's faces.

There's a dangerous passivity in your writing,
bordering on sounding as if you see yourself as a
witless dupe: "are constantly bombarded", for example.
Turn the goddamned television OFF! Better, get RID
of the thing, or at least get a small one that doesn't
make parking yourself on the sofa in front of it seem
like such a great thing; a little 14" TV will do just
fine to have a look at the news/sports/weather, which
is about all that's worth looking at on TV anyway, and
not even much of that.



It takes
no effort at all to gain, it can take monumental effort to lose. So they
spend their money and time on a bunch of fad diets and just get bigger and
bigger and in the mean time they never really learn how much they should
eat, etc.

Again, this information is readily available. One must
first want to know.


And then take the effort to sift through the BS.

Not much effort required. *I* know it, and I don't
even have a weight problem. That's another way of
saying there's no good reason FOR me to know it, yet I
do. For those who DO have ample reason to know it,
there's no excuse NOT to know it.



Besides, a lot of people who are big do cut down their intake of food a
lot in order to try to be healthier, and it doesn't always work.

If you cut your caloric intake to something less than
your caloric expenditure, you NECESSARILY will lose
weight.


Yes, burning more calories than you consume sounds pretty easy, doesn't it?

It IS easy. It may not be easy to make it into a large
difference, but a small net expenditure is EASY to attain.


Well if someone wants to take 10 years to get to goal weight, maybe.

No. The weight for "morbid obesity" is going to vary
by height and other physical characteristics, but let's
say we're talking about a 6' tall American male who
ought to weigh about 185 lb. and in fact weighs 260 lb.
It is absurdly easy to lose 3 pounds a month, if one
wants to do so; one could probably safely lose 5 with a
bit more effort, but we'll go with 3. It would take
the person just slightly more than 2 years at that rate
to get down to his target weight.



It's not.

It is.


It's hard to make a change significant enough to see the results within a
reasonable time.

Two years of modest but steady weight loss seems pretty
reasonable. That doesn't even allow for the fact that
one could increase the loss for a couple of scattered
months, say to 5-7 pounds.



In order to do that you have to know how much you can eat, how
many calories you can eat and still lose, what are good types of
exercise (walking, for example).

All of that information is readily available.


So is a lot of BS.

The good stuff is readily available, and should leap
out at anyone who goes into it knowing there are no
silver bullets.



Some people cut their food intake, but not enough,
or are eating smaller portions of high calorie foods, and they are
frustrated because they're unsatisified with the portions they eat but
still gain weight.

I mean, let's say someone ate 2 patio burritos for lunch every day, heated
up in the microwave with melted cheese over it. They cut it down to one
burrito.

DROP THE CHEESE!


Easy to say, you know what you're talking about. The "Food pyramid" tells
people to get 2 servings of dairy, so some people think cheese like that is
part of a balanced diet.

I don't have a weight problem, yet *I* know that the
recommendation for dairy means non- or low-fat milk
products. NOT cheese, not ice cream.



They still might not lose weight or stop gaining because it may not
be enough of a drop in calories/fat intake to help them.

This is why it's important to increase caloric
expenditure as well. It doesn't take much. A
beginner's walking speed is apparently 3.0-3.2 mph
(http://www.classicalmusicfitness.com/speed.htm). At
3.0 mph, you'll walk one mile in 20 minutes. For most
seriously obese people, those 20 minutes would be the
ONLY 20 minutes of additional exercise they get. It
isn't a lot, but it's a start. It simply is not a
believable excuse that they don't have the 20 minutes
to spend.


I agree that everyone

ESPECIALLY those with an obesity problem...

should *make time* for exercise. It's probably the
most important thing out of any of this.


The caloric intake and the caloric expenditure
are highly variable, and people who cut their caloric
intake but don't lose weight NECESSARILY are still
consuming more in calories than they burn.


Yes that's true! It's just that it takes effort and research

Very, very little. If a person can't find that out in
half an hour or less, s/he just doesn't want to know.


That's not really fair. They're given a large amount of information, most of
it untrue.

I'm not buying that. What you're doing is providing
excuses for people not to act.

I would bet money on the hunch that people even offer
"reflexology" for weight loss.

That idiot Irish whore Lesley ("pearl") for one...



In 2-3 hours of research, you should have enough
information to last a LIFETIME. Since we're talking
about something that has virtually an incalculable
effect on quality of life AND duration of life, that
seems like a pittance of time.


You're assuming 2-3 hours of productive research.

No, total. That's more than enough for someone to sort
out the good stuff from the crap.

You're not counting the
time spent looking at hypnotist sites, trying various diets from tv, etc.

"Trying diets" doesn't count as research.

FOB wrote:

True, but what your body and my body do with those calories may differ.

I've taken differences in resting metabolism into
account already; that's why *everything* I've written
in this thread talks about increases in exercise.

If you cut your caloric intake to something less than
your caloric expenditure, which probably requires an
increase in expenditure, you will lose weight. It's
medically and mathematically necessary.


In link.net,
Jonathan Ball stated
|
| A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. "Calorie" is an
| OBJECTIVE unit of energy. If there is one chocolate
| eclair on a table in front of us, and some referee
| randomly picks you or me to eat the eclair, it provides
| the same number of calories to you as it would to me.

I have decreased intake but not increased expenditure and I have lost 49.5
pounds. While I agree that exercise is a good thing, it is not a necessary
thing.

In link.net,
Jonathan Ball stated
|
| I've taken differences in resting metabolism into
| account already; that's why *everything* I've written
| in this thread talks about increases in exercise.
|
| If you cut your caloric intake to something less than
| your caloric expenditure, which probably requires an
| increase in expenditure, you will lose weight. It's
| medically and mathematically necessary.
|