How Do We Solve a Problem Like Obesity?

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, Steve_Wilkos said:

Gentlemen, here is an undisputable fact - all diet drinks taste better than their full fat equiv.

No chance. Diet Coke / Diet Pepsi / Diet Irn-Bru are disgusting.

Coke Zero & Pepsi Max, though, are the tits.

[Sergeant Wilson]

3 hours ago, Cosmic Joe said:

How much difference does a diet drink make to a big mac meal? 

I'm not convinced the choice of beverage is a significant factor in the morbidly obese. 

 

1 hour ago, Cosmic Joe said:

Missing meals on a regular basis, particularly breakfast, is counter-productive as your body thinks there is a famine on and starts saving/ producing fat. 

At least that's what I heard. 

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.

[GordonS]

1 hour ago, jamamafegan said:

Sounds like a hellish cycle - not good when it's getting to the stage of storing snacks under the bed.

Getting some better sleep would help - I don't know how you go about doing this. Drinking less caffeine, and drinking none at all after 6pm is one thing. Listen to a sleep story before bed? My missus loves them, I think they're shite but some people think they are great for nodding off.

To change your eating habits a big part of it comes down to will power. You could start by replacing what you snack on just now with low calorie and low sugar options. Instead of cadbury's, have a low calorie cake bar like a Fibre One. Eat low fat "light" cheese and have them with rice cakes instead of oatcakes.  Drink skimmed milk. If the stuff you are eating just now is high fat and high sugar you should try to replace everything with the lower calorie stuff.

Have you got a fitbit? I would recommend one, they are good for tracking your daily calorie intake vs calorie burn. Recording stuff you eat is a piece of piss and you'll be able to tell during the day when you are close to slipping into a calorie surplus. It might help you to think - right I've had my lot today. Even if you aren't exercising, you burn calories during the day anyway through normal activity.

Making these changes to your diet and watching what you're eating are small steps which over time will start to make a difference. Then of course there is exercise but your daily routine doesn't seem to allow for that just now. Key thing just now is to change what you eat. Eating shite all the time makes you feel like shite so that in my mind suggests if you eat a bit better, you will feel better and it might help give you that boost you need to do a little exercise.

Another thing - drink loads of water. Start every morning with a pint of water, down the fucker. And aim for at 2 litres every day. Helps you feel full.

This is not expert advice btw  just all friendly suggestions which may help...

Thanks, I appreciate the intention. I don't drink much caffeine and I've cut right back on it lately - I don't drink coffee, I'll only have 2 cups of normal tea a day and I drink about 500ml of caffeine-free diet coke a day. But I'm still not sleeping, partly due to stress, partly lockdown boredom and cabin fever.

I don't drink water but I drink gallons of sugar-free diluting blackcurrant juice. I get dehydrated easily so I've always done that.

I eat plenty of fruit and veg, and if I'm in a dangerously snacky mood I'll eat even more fruit as an alternative to something bad - turn out there are a surprising number of calories in 3 tangerines, 2 bananas and half a punnet of blueberries, which I'll put away in a couple of hours. I probably average a small bag of crisps and a "fun" sized chocolate bar a day, and a takeway once a fortnight or so. I'd rather die than eat low fat cheese tbh. 

My problem is that I love food, it makes me happy, and when I'm stressed or anxious or down it makes me feel better so over the course of several months almost every day I'll be a few hundred calories over.

Only once have I lost weight in a planned way. For 3 months I ate well, counted calories and jogged every other night. My weight came down well, I was physically in much better shape and I was getting round a 5 a side pitch in a way I never had before.. Everyone says you'll feel better but I was seriously miserable, I got absolutely no pleasure or satisfaction from being fitter.

The only thing that has worked was when my wife would give me a lunchbox for work and that had to do me the day. So spending the last year working in the kitchen has been a bit of a nightmare.

[vikingTON]

3 hours ago, coprolite said:

You're obviously loving the hyperbole of that 2/3 figure. That's mostly people who are "overweight" and not obese and who most people (apart from rude sanctimonious people who have obviously been cuckolded by a fatty) would not call fatties. 

Erm no, the overwhelming majority of people who are overweight are fatties. 

Fooling absolutely no-one. 

Quote

Changing metabolism and failing to adapt are not mutually exclusive. Metabolism is clearly a very important part of a complex picture and not a mimor variable. 

20% change to a single part of the overall calorie consumption v burned equation is in fact a minor factor, and that checking for this proves beyond the self-control of millions of British people does not mean that their metabolism made them fat. 

Most adults do not have the same diet when they are 21 as they did when they were 5: the same applies to those who are middle aged and start putting on more tyres than the Michelin man.

Quote

You're obviously right about everything even when you're obviously wrong so crack on with thinking that there's an easy solution and everyone else is just too thick to grasp it. 

^^^ verge of tears

[AmericanFan]

8 hours ago, Aufc said:

 

I suspect if you had an obese person eating 5,000 calories and told them to change to 2,000 calories then they would maybe manage it for a day but it wont be sustainable. They would need to start with a reasonable calorie intake of maybe around 4000 with some exercise thrown in. Then you can reduce the calorie intake as they begin to lose weight.

Whilst I am saying that something needs to be done, i appreciate that there needs to be some thought behind it for each individual to ensure it is sustainable.

I take my hat off to anyone that has lost a significant amount of weight.

Depends on the individual and there's no way to know for sure.

My point is that it's calories in, calories out.

[AmericanFan]

4 hours ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

 Shut up.

Nah.

[Aufc]

Depends on the individual and there's no way to know for sure.
My point is that it's calories in, calories out.

So you think someone could go from 5,000 calories to 2,000 overnight and sustain that for a period of time?

[AmericanFan]

3 minutes ago, Aufc said:

 

So you think someone could go from 5,000 calories to 2,000 overnight and sustain that for a period of time?

I don't know. Depends on the individual. It doesn't really matter though as to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you consume.

And not all calories are the same. Eating a ton of chicken and broccoli is going to make you full and not be high in calories, while eating candy bars and drinking soda that are high in calories is not going to make you full.

Edited March 5, 2021 by AmericanFan
more.

[BFTD]

30 minutes ago, Steve_Wilkos said:

Gentlemen, here is an undisputable fact - all diet drinks taste better than their full fat equiv.

I used to think they were chemical-tasting awfulness, but I weaned myself off the sugary drinks years ago once I figured out that it was a lot of extra calories, and my tastebuds gradually adapted. Now I can't drink the sugary sodas - they taste weird to me, and are thick like syrup by comparison.

I still hate Diet Coke, though. I don't know how anyone can voluntarily drink that shit; tastes like some kind of cleaning product. You can understand why Coca-Cola feel the need to bring out new diet versions every now and then.

[Aufc]

Id say diet coke is better but everything else is shite

[Steve_Wilkos]

Diet Coke is the daddy. Full fat drinks give me a sore tummy.

[velo army]

3 hours ago, GordonS said:

Thanks, I appreciate the intention. I don't drink much caffeine and I've cut right back on it lately - I don't drink coffee, I'll only have 2 cups of normal tea a day and I drink about 500ml of caffeine-free diet coke a day. But I'm still not sleeping, partly due to stress, partly lockdown boredom and cabin fever.

I don't drink water but I drink gallons of sugar-free diluting blackcurrant juice. I get dehydrated easily so I've always done that.

I eat plenty of fruit and veg, and if I'm in a dangerously snacky mood I'll eat even more fruit as an alternative to something bad - turn out there are a surprising number of calories in 3 tangerines, 2 bananas and half a punnet of blueberries, which I'll put away in a couple of hours. I probably average a small bag of crisps and a "fun" sized chocolate bar a day, and a takeway once a fortnight or so. I'd rather die than eat low fat cheese tbh. 

My problem is that I love food, it makes me happy, and when I'm stressed or anxious or down it makes me feel better so over the course of several months almost every day I'll be a few hundred calories over.

Only once have I lost weight in a planned way. For 3 months I ate well, counted calories and jogged every other night. My weight came down well, I was physically in much better shape and I was getting round a 5 a side pitch in a way I never had before.. Everyone says you'll feel better but I was seriously miserable, I got absolutely no pleasure or satisfaction from being fitter.

The only thing that has worked was when my wife would give me a lunchbox for work and that had to do me the day. So spending the last year working in the kitchen has been a bit of a nightmare.

This is the bit about obesity that often gets overlooked in the search for solutions to it. When we're stressed or anxious our body sends out cortisol. This in turn makes you crave sugary and salty foods, why? Because our body thinks it needs urgent extra fuel to fight the threat. It's also the key to why shaming doesn't work, nor even educating people on calorie intake and cardio exercise. Our instinctive biology (i.e. our limbic system) can't be willed away, and shame only acts as a further stimulus to our fight and flight apparatus, thus perpetuating rather than alleviating the eating of refined, quick release sugars.

It's also the reason that we should exercise. Exercise reduces cortisol levels and increases our levels of endorphins. Find something fun to do and be creative. You don't have to follow a program. Do keepy ups, or put some lively music on and just jump and dance around, or stick on "eye of the tiger" and shadow box for a bit. Make it an act of self care, not punishment. If you don't enjoy the exercise, change it up and do something else. Turn it into play, because (and I'll assume your gender from your name) as men we tend to turn everything we do into work, which is exhausting.

Returning to the original highlighted point, knowing that you're snacking when you're stressed and depressed is a huge step, because you can then focus on things that calm down your limbic system. This might be seriously hard as you may have a deep seated trauma that has told you to be on high alert, and the feelings arising from trying to relax can be unbearable (speaking from experience here), so be gentle and patient with yourself. 

I recommend the Wim Hof method  and any bodyscan meditation. Gentle breath based yoga is cracking as well. Gratitude journaling is unexpectedly helpful too. Simple way of gradually changing your brain chemistry.

 

 

 

[HibsFan]

24 minutes ago, velo army said:

This is the bit about obesity that often gets overlooked in the search for solutions to it. When we're stressed or anxious our body sends out cortisol. This in turn makes you crave sugary and salty foods, why? Because our body thinks it needs urgent extra fuel to fight the threat. It's also the key to why shaming doesn't work, nor even educating people on calorie intake and cardio exercise. Our instinctive biology (i.e. our limbic system) can't be willed away, and shame only acts as a further stimulus to our fight and flight apparatus, thus perpetuating rather than alleviating the eating of refined, quick release sugars.

It's also the reason that we should exercise. Exercise reduces cortisol levels and increases our levels of endorphins. Find something fun to do and be creative. You don't have to follow a program. Do keepy ups, or put some lively music on and just jump and dance around, or stick on "eye of the tiger" and shadow box for a bit. Make it an act of self care, not punishment. If you don't enjoy the exercise, change it up and do something else. Turn it into play, because (and I'll assume your gender from your name) as men we tend to turn everything we do into work, which is exhausting.

Returning to the original highlighted point, knowing that you're snacking when you're stressed and depressed is a huge step, because you can then focus on things that calm down your limbic system. This might be seriously hard as you may have a deep seated trauma that has told you to be on high alert, and the feelings arising from trying to relax can be unbearable (speaking from experience here), so be gentle and patient with yourself. 

I recommend the Wim Hof method  and any bodyscan meditation. Gentle breath based yoga is cracking as well. Gratitude journaling is unexpectedly helpful too. Simple way of gradually changing your brain chemistry.

I don't know nearly enough about food science to dispute any of this, but for the record, Cortisol sounds like something that the Herbalife punters would add on as an extra product to sweeten the deal to an unsuspecting customer.

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

I of course sympathise with everyone's desire to eat more healthily etc but I can't decide what's more depressing - the thought of people convincing themselves that diet soft drinks taste better than the proper versions, or the possibility that they actually believe it. Absolute nonsense - they're all utterly horrible. Diet Irn Bru in particular is nigh on undrinkable. 

You can retrain your tastebuds to appreciate different things. I cut sugar out of my diet entirely for a while last year, and it didn't half taste weirdly unappealing by the time I tried it again.

Not to worry, I kept at it and managed to put on a couple of stone over Christmas  

13 minutes ago, HibsFan said:

I don't know nearly enough about food science to dispute any of this, but for the record, Cortisol sounds like something that the Herbalife punters would add on as an extra product to sweeten the deal to an unsuspecting customer.

Lisa Cuddy managed to bring a paralysed man back to mobility in seconds with one injection of cortisol, so just imagine what it could do for you!

[Gaz]

21 minutes ago, BFTD said:

You can retrain your tastebuds to appreciate different things. I cut sugar out of my diet entirely for a while last year, and it didn't half taste weirdly unappealing by the time I tried it again.

Not to worry, I kept at it and managed to put on a couple of stone over Christmas  

Lisa Cuddy managed to bring a paralysed man back to mobility in seconds with one injection of cortisol, so just imagine what it could do for you!

Lisa Cuddy could bring me back to mobility in seconds.

[velo army]

1 hour ago, HibsFan said:

I don't know nearly enough about food science to dispute any of this, but for the record, Cortisol sounds like something that the Herbalife punters would add on as an extra product to sweeten the deal to an unsuspecting customer.

Aye I know next to f**k all about food science too. Cortisol is the hormone our bodies release when under stress. It serves to increase blood sugar and also to suppress the immune system (according to Wikipedia). Something we should all be trying to reduce tbh.

Genuinely can't believe that Herbalife is a thing. That and Huel. Mental.

[velo army]

24 minutes ago, Gaz said:

Lisa Cuddy could reduce me to immobility in seconds.

FTFM (fixed that for myself).

[Guest TheJTS98]

On 04/03/2021 at 19:13, G51 said:

I'd wager that more people in Japan and Korea are physically active at their work, whereas work in the UK tends to mean sitting in front of a computer all day pissing the time away on a task that doesn't really matter.

What physical work do you think people in Japan and Korea are doing? They've got exactly the same office jobs as people in The West.

On 04/03/2021 at 19:25, G51 said:

What I will say though is that the culture in the West is that we get up, we go to work, we come home and then we make our main meal for the day. That was fine when there was only one member of the household working, and most households were the "traditional family" model of two adults in a relationship. One of you went to work, the other had the time to make meals from scratch.

Again, this is no different in the more developed countries in Asia. I'm not picking on you individually at all, I think there's a general tendency to assume that The West, or often even specifically Scotland, has some kind of special circumstance that means we are prone to poor diet or over-drinking or lack of exercise. The reality is that there's nothing special about us or our way of life. Things are more or less the same elsewhere. We can't blame it on office jobs, or the availability of fast food, or family relationships etc. We are not remarkable or unusual in any of these regards.

When it comes to work culture, for example, Koreans are miles worse off than us. They work long hours which tend to be under-reported and unpaid, are subject to toxic hierarchical workplaces and a culture of often not even taking holidays they are due. Add in the fading but still present link between working together and semi-compulsory post-work drinks with the boss and colleagues and you've got a situation more grim than most in The West put up with and in no way conducive to a healthy life.

19 hours ago, hk blues said:

Obesity is more of a problem here than in much of the rest of Asia - too much rice,  sugary food and soft drinks IMO - also, they don't seem to do much exercise.

One thing I noticed when moving from Korea to Malaysia was the huge drop off in general levels of exercise. Koreans hike, they go for weekend walks by the river, they use cycle lanes in parks and by rivers, they join running groups, pensioners join walking groups. Exercise is part of life. In Malaysia most of the people I know are of Chinese origin and the idea of exercise just isn't part of life. They might go to the gym, but the idea of using stairs or going for a walk or buying a bike is just considered weird. It's not just climate, because the Koreans I know here do the same things as they did in Korea in terms of being active. There's a huge cultural difference in how exercise is perceived.

One thing Korea gets right is normalising the idea of exercise and designing cities in a way that encourages it. You can cycle and walk around Seoul. You'd need to be a maniac to cycle around KL and many parts of town are unfriendly to pedestrians. There's a lesson there, I think.

17 hours ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

Only read up to page 3 but couldn’t be in more agreement with this.

Work with a guy who’s absolutely massive, and every morning he starts the day with 2 cans of Monster. Another 1 at lunch, and probably more when he goes home. If he made literally only one change and drank water instead, he would see weight drop off.

Further to my above comparison between Korea and Malaysia, I see a load more fat Malaysians than I did Koreans. And it's noticeable how many of them spend the working day chucking back energy drinks. Absolutely bizarre. I just don't get it.

Edited March 6, 2021 by TheJTS98

[Rob1885]

lower the price of cigarettes and bring back ten decks.

[hk blues]

3 hours ago, TheJTS98 said:

One thing I noticed when moving from Korea to Malaysia was the huge drop off in general levels of exercise. Koreans hike, they go for weekend walks by the river, they use cycle lanes in parks and by rivers, they join running groups, pensioners join walking groups. Exercise is part of life. In Malaysia most of the people I know are of Chinese origin and the idea of exercise just isn't part of life. They might go to the gym, but the idea of using stairs or going for a walk or buying a bike is just considered weird. It's not just climate, because the Koreans I know here do the same things as they did in Korea in terms of being active. There's a huge cultural difference in how exercise is perceived.

 

In Hong Kong they are into walking and exercise in general,  but it's not the case here in the Philippines.  They are quite lazy, basically, although a fair amount of the younger guys do weight training. The gym culture hasn't taken off here and they don't do jogging or cycling.  

They still have that outdated idea that being a little heavy is a sign of wealth - quite the opposite of western thinking.  My son is skinny and it's looked upon as a negative here yet his chubby classmates are considered cute being a tad overweight.