I’m xxl but I’m also built like a forklift. When I was younger I could throw rolls of vinyl flooring over my shoulder. I wish I took better care of my knees though.
I love posts like this because it always has the subtle insinuation that weight gain is some moral failing on individuals instead of the natural result of allowing food producers across the board to sell the most unhealthy slop you could ever dream of while simultaneously making healthy food (literally just fresh, unprocessed items - i.e. the things that everyone ate for tens of thousands of years) a luxury item. This, of course, happening after food lobbyists successfully brainwashed entire generations of people with their shareholder-approved “food pyramid.”
I think you have great points, but I also don’t want to absolve personal responsibility entirely. I think I saw Boogie for on the Financial Audit and spends $900 per month on fast food? There’s definitely food deserts and busy people with busy lives and bad education. Absolutely. I also find that healthier living was easier in the UK as grocery stores had ready-made meals easier to access with better options. However, I do think there’s also a component of personal accountability for those that know the right thing to do and choose not to.
…the average American had between 400 and 500 calories worth of snacks a day, which is typically more than what they ate at breakfast. Even worse, the snacks usually carried little to no nutritional value
All food has gotten expensive due to inflation/greedflation, but (at least in my area) snacks, desserts, and some sugary drinks got hit especially hard. Except maybe for people living in food deserts, snacks are way more of a luxury good than “whole” foods are nowadays.
Also fucked up is that fat doesn’t = bad. I dunno when this came about but you can be unhealthy and skinny as well, and you can be unhealthy and jacked. I won’t say that, kind of along the lines of a bodybuilder, it’s easy to be healthy and be fat, but you can do it. Sumo wrestlers. You want that subcutaneous fat, and not that visceral fat, and you wanna have good cardio and heart health.
Part of the reason why people become super fat is because they enter a kind of death spiral where they don’t believe they’ll ever get better, and then they eat more, because what’s the point if you’ll never get better at all. Part of the reason why they think they’ll never get better is because people are constantly telling them that’s the case, and that they’re at fault for being the way they are, when usually people get really fat through some childhood trauma or mental disorder. I’m not gonna blame someone for that, or demand they “take responsibility” for it. Especially if them “taking responsibility” for it just ends up making them eat more slop.
It’s really not that complicated. Positive reinforcement and active help is a lot better in these situations than demanding that people be held accountable for being so fat, or that it’s their choice, or whatever. I don’t really care to argue the semantics of philosophies of “free will” or whatever, I’m just saying people need to not be dicks to fat people, because that’s more productive to making them be healthy.
Hear hear. And it wouldn’t matter to me even if being fat were automatically a death sentence and the only reason people got that way was laziness. Even if it were a simple choice that someone made, it’s still none of my business, y’know?
It’s both none of my business, and being a dick isn’t an effective way to get them to change. I dunno why so many people kind of have that as like, a default response. I guess it makes sense to get mad when someone you care about “chooses” to self-destruct, but people are complicated and delicate machines, and they require better maintenance than the nuclear option, and ultimatums.
I think part of why people have this sort of desire for everyone to have agency, they have this narrative, is because it’s the only way that they’ll be able to keep dealing with all these shitty things in their life. It’s like a really bad survival strategy, or something, people become kind of fucked up and then they only function if they have this dire sense of internal pressure at all times, that they’re responsible for everything that happens in their life. It’s weird, and I don’t really get it.
Plenty of philosophers over the centuries have thought long and hard about the free will problem, and not all of them have come out on the side of it existing. David Hume, for instance, had to resort to religion to solve his issues with it (God made us have free will), and several contemporary philosophers have come down firmly on the “deterministic but complex enough to look non-deterministic” side of the fence. in essence, that free will is an illusion, but a good enough one that we still feel like we have it.
Okay fair enough. But that’s philosophy and doesn’t really translate to the physical properties of the universe. I do understand what you’re saying from the philosophical point of view. I did read both responses you sent.
“I can spend a ton of executive function thinking about and preparing food in a way contrary to what the food industry and their advertisers, food engineers, psychologist, etc., try to get a person to do while having only a slight chance at losing weight if I’ve already gained it. I’ll probably do so by getting involved in the super scammy diet industry.”
Vs
“I don’t want to spend that much of my life thinking about, preparing, tracking food (maybe because I have an eating disorder/medical issue/mental health issues, maybe because it’s just not worth it to me)”
It’s also not just a choice, it’s dozens of choices every day, forever.
You’re way oversimplifying it. We’re not going to magically get better humans, so maybe changing the systems would be a better way to get results than relying on people and industry to change their behavior (which is obviously not working).
Even if you only have access to garbage food you can still limit your caloric intake. I eat fast food every day I work and I’m a healthy weight. It’s not difficult at all.
All you have to do is know how many calories you need in a day (this is easily available online)and keep track of how many you’re eating (again nutritional info is easily available online). If you want to get really fancy with it you can look at protein/carbs/fat specifically.
Everything else comes down to self control and making excuses. If you have problems with snacking don’t keep snacks in the house or at least serve them in a reasonable portion instead of sitting with the bag and shoveling them down your gullet for an hour before you realize what you’ve done to yourself. If you only have fast food options buy al a carte items instead of the XXL Big Mac combo with a 1/2 gallon of coke. A bit of self awareness when you are choosing what you consume is all it takes.
I’ve practiced CICO most of my adult life. Both when I wanted to gain weight and when I wanted to lose it. It works. The body can only reduce metabolism so much. If you maintain a deficit you will lose weight. When I’m cutting I can plan almost exactly how long it will take to get where I want to be just by tracking calories.
I was only commenting on the concept of free will. Doesn’t matter where you apply it, we’re all just following our programming.
Obviously, the program is incredibly complex, otherwise the illusion of free will wouldn’t be so easy to believe.
However, there are many examples where the programming becomes apparent.
The best example of this is a radio lab episode about a woman with transient global amnesia. Her memory reset every 90 seconds, and she kept repeating the same conversation over and over for hours. Like a program stuck in a loop.
She couldn’t choose to say something else. Given the same input, she would repeat the same response every time. She didn’t have the ability to realize she had already said it, so she just kept looping.
Healthy food is absolutely not a luxury item. I’ll accept the argument that the time to prepare healthy food is a luxury, but in almost every corner of the US you will find basic ingredients (eg rice, beans, carrots, celery, corn, potatoes, pasta) are way less expensive than the pre-prepared slop in boxes in the middle aisles of the store. People are addicted to that sugary shit and actively choose it
Addiction is the inability to stop doing something.
With the acknowledgement that addiction is a disease, what’s happening is a part of the brain cannot stop choosing to do something, for a variety of legitimate chemical and habitual reasons
Lol yes. Choice has meaning. Choice here being dictated by compulsive behavior, or dominant chemical signaling is still choice. Like, your brain is doing it. Choice is not just “what color shirt will I wear today”, it is far deeper.
I’m not victim blaming or trying to fuck with you, I am focusing on the fact that words have meaning, and choice isn’t just a surface level, front brain thing. Choice is integral to the human condition, and choice and addiction are bedfellows. The latter dominating the former.
Choice is, by definition, not subject to compulsion, and if it is subject to compulsion is not a willing choice, it is forced and influenced. If you want to be a pedantic asshole at least have the intellectual integrity to be right first.
Compulsion: an irresistible persistent impulse to perform an act
Impulse: a sudden desire, whim, or inclination
Inclination: a preference or tendency, or a feeling that makes a person want to do something
Preference: the power or opportunity of choosing
Addiction is the loss of power or opportunity to CHOOSE.
You seem obsessed with the assumption that I think addicts are just weakly choosing the wrong thing, or something. That’s very much not my suggestion. Deep in the core of the brain, chemical dependence pathways influence decisionmaking in a way the victim is unable to override.
How is choosing to buy a sugared drink instead of water the same as playing a game of chess against a grandmaster? What exactly about it makes your analogy fit?
Information: does an individual know chess rules? Openings? En passant? Do they want to spend the time and effort to learn? Are they getting their info from reliable sources or are they learning bongcloud and knooks?
Difference in skill level: the food and diet industries have thousands of specialists on their side with experience in psychology, advertisement, economics, lobbying, etc. Grandmasters can set up traps that new like a good idea to their opponent while thinking 10 steps ahead.
Complexity: chess and diet are not a single choice, but a series of choices, some of which make later moves more difficult.
Effort: it takes a long time to learn enough to even put up a decent resistance to a grandmaster, let alone win. It’s more than I’d care to put in. I don’t want to think about chess all the time. That’s called a chessing disorder.
So your point is that it’s difficult to resist the urge to buy sugared drinks due to distinct factors such as lack of information about it being unhealthy (which I seriously doubt nowadays) and people being psychologically manipulated through advertisements and making their product economically competitive. I agree some of these factors make it easier to be unhealthy, but I disagree that it’s enough to say people don’t have and make a choice. The choice to be healthy is just a harder one to make than it should.
You’re straw manning me. I’m not saying people don’t have a choice. But they’re still going to lose. It doesn’t matter that I have a choice of which piece to move when the point is not to move pieces, but to checkmate. Saying there are choices misses the point.
No it doesn’t because you’re arguing as if choices were dependant on one another. Choosing to avoid a coke one time doesn’t mean you’re now in a bad position to avoid another coke later on. It’s not about winning or losing it’s about building habits and keeping them, which I have agreed is made hard in some people’s environment.
The point I’m making is that a game of chess has a conclusion, a destiny if you will, in which you’ll lose even if you make a good choice right now. Real life is not like that, your choice to be healthy now does not mean you’ve lost the opportunity to do so in the future, ultimately leading you to your “destiny” of being unhealthy. That is victim mentality and we shouldn’t endorse it. Still, I completely agree that making the unhealthy choice has become easier in recent times, and we should strive to reverse that trend.
I don’t believe I talked you down or stayed from a respectful tone, but if I made you feel like that I just want to say it was not my intention. In any case, have a good one!
I was also reading an article about nutritional quality of food itself has been declining over the last 50 years. So to get the same nutritional amount, you need to eat more food period.
There’s also bigger systemic issues about food access that is driving people to “choose” it. Lack of time, cost, availability, transportation all factor in that are beyond a simple idea if a person having a pure choice between two equal (or even somewhat equal) options.
Many people in the US also live in food deserts where easy access to healthy food IS a luxuary due to simply not being able to buy it where they live or work.
almost every corner of the US you will find basic ingredients (eg rice, beans, carrots, celery, corn, potatoes, pasta) are way less expensive than the pre-prepared slop in boxes
However, a number of studies suggest that poor health in “food deserts” is primarily caused by differences in demand for healthy food, rather than differences in availability.
First of all, that’s one “devil’s advocate however” in an article full of information to the contrary.
Second of all, I’d be interested in seeing who funded those studies. Lobbying groups for different unhealthy foods as well as grocery stores looking for excuses to not cater to poor people often fund junk studies that say exactly what they want them to. Just like Big Tobacco did and political groups still do.
Third, addiction still ≠ choice and sugar is more addictive than most narcotics.
Just on your last point, sugar is not more addictive than narcotics. That’s complete bunk. Provide a primary source for that claim if you want to refute me, but all those headlines about that topic were sensational and were basically based on sugar lighting up the same part of the brain as narcotics, namely the pleasure areas. So we like them both, but that has no bearing on addictiveness.
Huh, guess I might technically live in a food dessert
low-income census tracts that are more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas.
The reality is probably that kernel developers don’t get any younger nowadays. And believe me, when you get older, have children and less free time, your waistline suffers a bit. Or even a bit more than a bit.
Man I used to think there was no relation between what I ate and my wardrobe size, but eventually it really does catch up with you, especially if your day job is sedentary.
A lot of people laugh at this, but it’s painfully true.
Hell, I do Brazilian Jiu-jitsu three times a week, and lift/run on the other days. At a certain point for many, you just can’t outrun a bad diet, and maintaining anything other than a dad bod requires all that exercise AND a strict diet. Good fucking luck doing all of that with a screaming baby at home!
I never thought I’d be fat, especially since back when I was 18 I could smash a meal at McDonald’s and exercise right after, while keeping a six pack. Now, it requires double the exercise to not have tits…
You don’t need a lot, or even any exercise, to prevent overweight. Diet is everything. The amount of extra calories you can eat for a run is easily outweighed by the extra hunger.
I was in the same situation. I started to walk and longboard every day and track my calories without exception.
Eventually, you can see changes and it becomes easier over time, but oh boy I never shame anyone for their body size, because it’s hella hard, and if you’re coping with other problems like depression or addiction, it’s gotta feel damn near impossible.
The one advantage of being significantly ill this year is that I can finally fit into large shirts and medium pants after years of XXL and XL of the former and latter.
I’ve technically gone down from XL. Seems L often fit me better now. But I’ve not changed.
Seems like sizes have shifted higher. Only evidence I have for this are souvenir t-shirts from 20 years ago that say XL. Which are roughly same size as L shirts I’ve bought recently.
Tall people are often calculated as being obese as well. BMI has me at 30.8 because I am 6’2" and weight 240lbs. I have a 34" waist however and constantly moving.
I’m 6’4" 210. Considered overweight per BMI chart. I do not have dad bod.
Fit people with the obese designation as you say being a fluke is true. Because you have to be massive to hit that. I’d need to put on another 35 lbs to reach it. Which I’m not interested in. I just want to be healthy. Not swole.
So I agree with your point on obese range. The common criticism comes from there being many more people like me who hit the overweight range. But I don’t know anyone in my fitness pals group who cares after laughing it off the first time.
Fun fact: "6′4″ is well above average for a man, in the 98.9th percentile. ie only 1.1% of men are 6′4″ or taller in the US. " from a quick google search :p
But yeah I totally get your point. I’m a fitness guy myself but I just feel like people are too quick to dismiss BMI when for a dead easy and simple method it’s generally useful. I’d also hope that anybody who would be making decisions about BMI (went through med/PA or at least nursing school) would be able to think critically about the individual they’re evaluating too but that might be wishful thinking lol
A better estimation is waist to height ratio. If your waist is more than 50% of your height, you have an issue. It tracks a lot better with cardiovascular disease and diabetes risks than BMI.
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