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LordArgh posted:if only there was some way for people to do their own portion control and not eat the entire contents of a bag at once That would rely on people not being retards.
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Dec 29, 2015 00:49
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CalmDownMate posted:That would rely on people not being retards. It doesn't help that snack foods are deliberately created to be unfulfilling. It's clever marketing, really; "these are things you eat while watching the TV!" Next thing you know it's 1,000 calories later but you barely noticed.
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Dec 29, 2015 00:53
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Flaky posted:I can't really say enough good about the diet. My sister has lost 8kgs, I have lost 6kgs, we were both already in the healthy range when we started. And we aren't keto adapted, we just dont eat very much carbs (ie. bacon and eggs for breakfast, and no pasta, rice or bread). You can talk ill-informed poo poo all you like, but I have a degree in bioscience and it makes sense to me. I can absolutely believe that our dietary guidelines are determined more by industry than health. Numerous elite athletes have admitted they are on the diet. I highly recommend you all read up about it, because it isn't snake oil, and especially stop perpetuating untrue and confusing statements like 'a calorie is a calorie' and 'fruit juice is healthy because fruit!' or whatever. my degrees in experimental psychology and statistics tell me you're confusing what is true with what feels good. it's a common mistake in people who think about behavior without knowing anything about it.
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Dec 29, 2015 10:49
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Just to add to that,Flaky posted:I can absolutely believe that our dietary guidelines are determined more by industry than health. I'd bet this is correct, but it's a total non sequitur in your post. Also, even if it were the case that mainstream health claims are competently and totally BS, that wouldn't be any kind of evidence that a particular alternative is true.
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Dec 29, 2015 11:12
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Dietary guidelines aren't set by industry, aside from an arguable case involving (iirc) dairy producers several decades ago. If we're talking nutritional labeling or nutritional recommendation structures (like the food pyramid) I can discuss the different regimes and their rationales if folks would like. USDA guidelines I'm less familiar with.
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Dec 29, 2015 11:23
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I am pretty interested.
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Dec 29, 2015 12:10
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USDA Nutritional Chart Effortpost The USDA has had several different charts that they've used to communicate nutritional requirements to the American public. These guides have changed over time to reflect current policy beliefs, and concerns about how well they are communicated. It's important to note what these things are, and what they aren't. These guides were designed to reach a very large part of the population at a very low age. These charts do not
 Interactive funtime! I've gotten fairly large images of all the guidance charts, so click them to blow them up and see how their designs have gotten better and worse over the years! Basic 7(1940s-50s) It's the early 1940s and you're a high-ranking USDA official. You know that the United States is the world's breadbasket, but a recent comprehensive survey reveals that somehow a ton of kids and adults in the US are suffering from malnutrition because they don't know that there is any reason to consume, for example, any kind of vegetable. Nutrition science is still in its infancy, but you know enough to know that John Q Public feeding his kid a diet exclusively consisting of oatmeal "because it's good for them" is probably the cause- or they're not eating enough period. What do you do? You sprint to modify WWII rationing guidance and put out the Basic 7. The nutrition information in this prototypic campaign is laughably terrible, and also responds to a narrower set of needs- the major concern was that people under rationing (or generally) were basically eating like goons out of pure ignorance. This remained an ongoing focus up to the 90s.  Basic 4(1950s-1992) There's no single image that represents this campaign effectively because it was revised a number of times over its tenure. The 7 were reduced to four largely in response to a view that the prior system was too complex for consumers and children to understand. A greater emphasis on understandable serving sizes and reduced information was the main focus. I know a great deal less about this campaign- like the Basic 7, it was well-intended and generally had a positive effect, but the research behind it was still pretty bad.   Food Pyramid(1992-2005) Y'know how the stuff from back when you were always a kid is always objectively the greatest stuff ever? Unfortunately, that's actually true for the Food Pyramid. The exact origins of the design are disputed, but simplified versions of the image above were in my school growing up, were probably in yours too, and you probably remember it. The food pyramid was an attempt to simultaneously incorporate more recent research information about food groups, get specific about groups, provide more options for consumption in guidance, and begin to address concerns over "empty calories" as obesity became a more visible problem for policymakers. It accomplished all of these pretty darn well. It's objectively a pretty great way of communicating nutritional guidance. Relationships between groups and their relative importance is clear at a glance (the sugar and fat particles stuff was dropped from most designs, thankfully). The pyramid came with serving and example information without being overly particular (a problem with earlier systems) and was comprehensible for small children and the lay public (who tend to be harder to communicate to than children). The Food Pyramid unfortunately came into the world during an era of increasing political conflict over food policy- industry groups and academics criticized the pyramid for a number of things, some deserved and some not. This was the beginning of accusations of collusion with industry via a number of really dumb attacks ("you could technically eat x amount of hamburger every day according to the food pyramid, and that's associated with an increase in heart disease! BIG MEAT LOBBY"). Concerns were also expressed that the pyramid didn't account for epidemiologic group response patterns for different nutrients, and didn't include exercise(  ). Some more valid criticisms include a concern over an inverse interpretation ("sweets are on top of the pyramid, so they must be the most important!") and labeling concerns over simplified versions (the second tier groups were sometimes labeled "dairy" and "meat", and the midpoint was centered between them without portion amounts) and specific components of the accompanying guidance. MyPyramid(2005-2011) This is the miserable thing that came out in response. Simultaneously overdesigned and underdeveloped, it's very hard to tell what MyPyramid is supposed to communicate. The color-coded stripes represent different food groups, and their proportions of the base are meant to indicate their ratio in your diet. No, it often didn't come with any sort of explanation. The little man is supposed to represent exercise. MyPyramid was accompanied by a website that was supposed to let the public develop personalized nutritional recommendations based on demographic data. Predictably, very few people used it. Just about every part of the MyPyramid chart is meant to "represent" something, but it's a lot less informative than the old pyramid, and it functions more as a logo than as any sort of guidance. I hate it. The short version is everyone else did, too-it was seen as corrupted by industry by the same people who hated the Pyramid, but the nutrition science, public policy and education actors tended to also hate its guts. Why did something so terrible get released?  . There was a massive wave of retirements at many federal agencies after Bush was elected- my guess is that the designers/communication people at USDA were among the retirees, and they didn't get good replacements. Alternately, this may have been a product of Ann Veneman, the first Bush-era AgSec. I need to ask around to find out her reputation at the agency, but many of Bush's appointees were seen as underqualified, and MyPyramid was developed during her tenure. MyPlate(sigh, 2011-right now) Now we have this pile of poo poo. While still not as bad as MyPyramid, the unbalanced ratios, lack of a center point and separate dairy circle mean that comparing the amounts in the groups is very hard to do. The idea is that it's supposed to map onto what's on your kid's plate, but there's no real reason to think that's an effective intervention approach. It's hated by the anti-corruption people still, but if you haven't noticed the pattern yet, these folks don't actually like anything- they make a living off of publishing books about how terrible things are, or working for particular industry groups to try to get leverage for their clients, so their concerns are rarely valid. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Dec 29, 2015 |
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Dec 29, 2015 22:09
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Discendo Vox posted:Dietary guidelines aren't set by industry, aside from an arguable case involving (iirc) dairy producers several decades ago. If we're talking nutritional labeling or nutritional recommendation structures (like the food pyramid) I can discuss the different regimes and their rationales if folks would like. USDA guidelines I'm less familiar with. I'd suspected more "heavily influenced by lobbyists muddying the water" and "decided by bureaucrats for political reasons" rather than directly "set by industry" Thank you for the effort post
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Dec 30, 2015 00:25
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E. I think I read sarcasm where there was none.
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Dec 30, 2015 00:57
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PT6A posted:Are people really getting fat because they're going to the store and buying tons of junk food and soda, though? Or are they getting fat because, gently caress it, it's a lot easier to hit McDonald's on the way home than anything else. Both. Not having to buy ingredients, clean the drat kitchen, prep, cook, eat, and clean the drat kitchen again makes McD's a tempting thing for someone coming off 8-10 hours of often stressful and increasingly desk-bound work. Throw in some comfort food, and it's pretty easy to get tankass real fast.
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Dec 30, 2015 01:34
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Some  on regulation and corruptionThere are two major agencies involved in the relevant areas here: USDA and FDA. Disclaimer- I don't work for either organization, but I'd like to one day. FDA FDA is the Food and Drug Administration- overseen by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs (currently an interim guy named Ostroff- it's hard to keep people in the role at the best of times, and legislative shifts have made appointments harder to confirm). It's also a division of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the secretary of HHS. FDA oversees the regulation of food, drugs, medical devices, dietary supplements, veterinary products, and a bunch of more obscure, legally distinct areas like human tissue products and anything that emits some kinds and amounts of radiation. Its mandate is really broad, but every single part of the organization is consumer-focused. The person overseeing food regs at FDA is Michael Taylor- while he used to work for Monsanto, his reputation is pretty much beyond reproach. He was brought in (and his position was created) mostly to facilitate the implementation of a massive upscaling of the food safety system as part of FSMA, the Food Safety Modernization Act. Most of it's outside the scope of this thread, but the point of bringing it up is that the attention of FDA's food division leadership is focused on a food safety policy change, not domestic nutrition issues. FDA regulates food packaging, including nutrition labels, and many parts of the US food supply system- FDA inspectors certify almost all food manufacturing plants and components within the US. Advertising and packaging regulatory authority is split between the FDA and FTC, who (because they have their own money problems) have usually left it up to the FDA with some notable exceptions. FDA's budget is spread incredibly thin- I'm fond of saying that they've been cutting into bone on their budgets for several decades now. As a direct result, FDA consumer-facing nutrition education and policy is limited. FDA does, however, establish the Reference Daily Intakes (RDI) which are partly derived from Institute of Medicine-published Dietary Reference Values(DRV). These are the stuff you see on food packaging. Both the RDI and the DRV are extremely contentious, scientifically and politically. They're the main way FDA regulates and implements nutrition policy. The mandate of the FDA, from the beginning, top-down and bottom-up, has been consumer protection and information. FDA has a reputation as the cleanest and most stringent food and drug agency on the planet. This has deteriorated somewhat in their Drug divsion over the past couple decades due to really unimaginable levels of pressure from particular angles, and there are other caveats, but for our purposes, the food division is still considered pretty much free of corruption. The arrangement of the agency and the stakes involved are such that they have no real incentive to corruption- particularly in the food area. I know FDA much better than USDA, and can to some extent speak to their organization and particular political issues and entities in the discourse around their work. USDA USDA is the agency directly under the Secretary of Agriculture. The USDA has a complicated mandate that merges issues of managing US agricultural markets, food safety, regulating farm practices, nutrition and consumer protection. USDA regulates many aspects of the vegetable and animal product supply chain within the US- for example, USDA inspectors certify meat and butcher plants. You may notice that both the FDA and USDA have a food safety mandate. This overlap has a long and complicated regulatory history, but it's generally amicable and the line is clear on who does what- the agencies are in close enough contact that there aren't usually issues. USDA is one of several agencies that does consumer-facing education on nutrition. The USDA has a complicated mandate that merges issues of managing US agricultural markets, food safety, regulating farm practices, nutrition and consumer protection. The organization is simultaneously charged with facilitating US ag markets and regulating them, as well as keeping consumers safe and happy. It's simultaneously supposed to serve industry and consumers. This structural conflict of interest can lead to industrial regulatory capture problems. "regulatory capture" basically means that the industry regulated by the agency can "capture" or influence the way that the agency regulates them. USDA has had problems with people in division A of the agency saying one thing ("the dairy union had an unusually high return this year, and prices are falling- we need to get americans to eat more cheese") and comm people in division B of the agency saying something else ("the daily recommended serving amount of cheese is x- the daily intake among goons is 5x. Stop eating so much nacho dip, you stupi- division A, what the gently caress are you doing?!? 'Nacho Shakes?!?' Do they look like they should be drinking queso dip?!?"). My understanding is that this is less prevalent as the entity has tried to reorganize itself, and, perhaps more importantly, as industry groups have organized separate messaging instruments so there's less of a sense at USDA that they need to speak to industry interests. I was originally a lot more skeptical of USDA nutrition claims, but as I've dug through things I tends to see more incoherence than corruption- and less of either than I'd expected. Others Other agencies releasing consumer-facing nutritional policy include a couple different executive level bureau initiatives and the CDC, which is epidemiologically focused in its methods and recommendations. I don't know these other groups as well, but my understanding is that while CDC recommendations are sometimes(perhaps often, owing to methods and interpretation issues) scientifically disputed, they're viewed as a clean organization. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 02:28
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Liquid Communism posted:Both. Not having to buy ingredients, clean the drat kitchen, prep, cook, eat, and clean the drat kitchen again makes McD's a tempting thing for someone coming off 8-10 hours of often stressful and increasingly desk-bound work. Throw in some comfort food, and it's pretty easy to get tankass real fast. Yea, fat people are buying snacks like chips and soda and poo poo at the store for home consumption and eating restaurant/fast food for their meals. They're also drinking soda for those meals too. Fat people are gross.
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Dec 30, 2015 03:18
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khwarezm posted:dieting simply does not work and telling people to sort themselves out and go on a diet is totally ineffective Please come to YLLS. We don't bite. quote:a diet and exercise routine most people would find unsustainable: She eats 1,800 calories a day Also, flaky is a weird low-carb person, so take everything he says with a lot of salt. Eskaton fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 19:21
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Eskaton posted:Also, flaky is a weird low-carb person, so take everything he says with a lot of salt. Can't. Doing the low-sodium diet right now
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Dec 31, 2015 19:47
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Armani posted:Can't. Doing the low-sodium diet right now Just came back from a checkup, apparently my blood pressure is on the border, but they didn't think I had too much salt because I was thin. I have no idea how salt consumption relates to weight. They basically said because I was thin not to worry about it. Just because I was skinny-fat they ignored my heath needs. If I was not a skinny-fat I bet I would have got some good advice or help.
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Dec 31, 2015 20:03
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Eskaton posted:Please come to YLLS. We don't bite. Seconded. The system works. quote:Holy poo poo this article is stupid. I've done 1500 calories a day as a man for a few months to drop weight and this is unbearable? Of course, depending on a person's mass and activity, 1800 could be either hells-of under maintenance or a slow bulk, but I think the average person finds keeping to any arbitrary limit pretty onerous. The idea of deciding to eat or not eat things based on what you've already eaten that day confounds some people. Also the woman quoted also limits herself to 50g of carbs a day and runs a lot, which sounds pretty drat unbearable to me. But I don't want to seem like I'm defending the article, which I agree is sad and bad.
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Dec 31, 2015 21:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Really when it comes to dieting a lot of people are looking for something that just plain doesn't exist but the only diets that ever seem to be profitable are "lose 20 pounds in a month and keep it off forever! WOW!!!" The hilarious thing is...that exists. In December (the month everyone says is hardest to lose weight) I lost a total of 14 pounds by doing the following: 1) Rigorous calorie counting. If it went in my mouth, I logged it. I aimed for around 1600-1800 calories a day before exercise (the number shifted down towards 1600 the more weight I lost). This is a really aggressive goal but I figured I'd rather set a tough goal I don't meet than an easy one that is just barely skating by. Shockingly, while it was tough at first after about a week or two my body adjusted and it wasn't that hard at all. I don't have nearly the food cravings I did before I started and I think I've gone over my calorie budget maybe twice since I started. Once was Christmas dinner and the other was a trip to a sports bar to watch football with my friends (beer is full of calories, don't drink a lot of it) 2) Rigorous portion control. Don't know how much something is worth calorie-wise? Look it up. If you can't find it...don't eat it. I also bought an eight dollar food scale to help me measure out meals at home. Best 8 bucks I've ever spent. 3) Exercise. I used to run track and cross-country and played a lot of rec sports in college. After graduating I got lazy but I've been trying to go to the gym at least 5 times a week and working out for at least 45 minutes a go. Shockingly when you do that you end up feeling good about yourself and it helps the weight loss. That's it. Three things and I lost 13 pounds and moved my BMI and body fat percentages out of the obese range. Since then I've gone down another pound making it an even 14. My actual goal is still far away (need to lose another 15 to be close) but good lord, it's really not that hard. The toughest part is making those 3 things aspects in your life and things you do all the time. If they're part of your lifestyle and a habit you'll keep doing them. If not...you won't. Now of course the thing I'm trying to stay vigilant about is not back-sliding. That's why I weigh myself daily at the same time and in the same conditions (right after waking up, before breakfast, etc). I know it's likely there will be back-sliding but if I can become aware of it before it's "whoa I gained 5 pounds" it's much easier to correct. So how does this fit into the whole social problem of obesity? Well probably a good start would be controlling portions better at restaurants and making sure people know how much say an ounce of peanut butter actually looks like. When I was feeding myself at home it was pretty easy to figure out how much I just ate, but restaurants were really tough. Especially since there's no law that says smaller places have to declare the nutritional content of stuff on their menus. Which, I will admit, is probably where a lot of people trip up. My solution to that was to avoid eating out as much as I had been and cook more stuff at home. I learned that taco meat freezes really, really well and it's very cheap+easy to make tacos yourself rather than going to the mexican place down the street where the nutritional content of their tacos was  So maybe better education around food portioning? When I got my food scale and I found out how much I had been using vs what I thought I was using it was eye opening. The things cost less than 10 bucks, there's no reason that everyone shouldn't have one. axeil fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 06:07
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I want to add to the above post that while all of this violent pro-Atkins, violent anti-Atkins, paleo, food pyramid, whatever, stuff is necessarily stupid and food type choice is ancillary to food amount, it really helps to focus mostly on the right kind of food. This is not news to (nearly) anyone ITT, but obviously, cake and coke are less filling per calorie than carrots, chicken breast and water. On the other hand, I think it should also be acknowledged that while in theory, losing weight is as simple as inserting fewer calories than what you burn, it seems fairly obvious that humans are wired in such a way that in the situation most find themselves in in the west, it's simply very hard for them to stick to that simple formula. Like, it's genuinely hard - especially for poor people.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:01
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Perhaps it would help just to have people take mandatory cooking classes at all levels of education? Not just making cookies and cakes in elective home ec classes, but really forcing people to learn how to make a variety of three squares meals from the time they're in elementary school. You could start with having them make sandwiches and salads, and work up to proper entrees and baking. Shift nutritional education from health class to cooking class, and with enough repetition the numbers and portioning would become a lot more intuitive to people, so that they could feed themselves healthily when they're adults.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:08
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Perhaps it would help, but it will at best have a tiny impact. As will, most likely, every, or almost every, other thing we can do.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:11
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How about 1. Calculate BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) 2. Eat 200 calories less than BMR a day You can sit and watch TV all day and still lose weight. Alternatively eat at BMR. As long as your daily movement is nonzero, you'll still lose weight.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:24
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Unseen posted:How about
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Jan 4, 2016 14:35
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Cingulate posted:Well, how about it? Do you want to propose anybody do this? Sure dude, I'll make a jpeg infographic and we'll post it on social media. We can make America thin again.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:30
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Another thing regarding calorie counting: how many people do you think have and regularly use a scale in their kitchen to measure servings? I do for some things, and it's often surprising how my estimation for a proper portion ends up being way larger than it should be. If people are trying to count calories but are only estimating portion sizes, it makes a lot of sense why they think it's impossible and doesn't work to actually lose weight.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:40
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PT6A posted:Another thing regarding calorie counting: how many people do you think have and regularly use a scale in their kitchen to measure servings? I do for some things, and it's often surprising how my estimation for a proper portion ends up being way larger than it should be. If people are trying to count calories but are only estimating portion sizes, it makes a lot of sense why they think it's impossible and doesn't work to actually lose weight. Unseen posted:Sure dude, I'll make a jpeg infographic and we'll post it on social media
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Jan 4, 2016 15:53
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axeil posted:So maybe better education around food portioning? When I got my food scale and I found out how much I had been using vs what I thought I was using it was eye opening. The things cost less than 10 bucks, there's no reason that everyone shouldn't have one. That's kind of my point; what's being advertised are diets that you can lose 20 pounds quick on then go back to your awful ways and not gain the weight back. Being healthy and smaller than medically obese is a matter of lifestyle choices in the long term not crash diets. That's the biggest issue with the diet industry and food industries. Portion control and paying attention to what you eat are the hugest deal. It's very interesting to look at pictures that do things like compare various foods in what amounts to 200 calories. It can be a candy bar or like half of a freaking melon. Eating five candy bars is pretty easy. An entire melon is actually really filling.
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Jan 4, 2016 16:52
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Unseen posted:How about How are you calculating BMR? Are you constantly readjusting it everyday based upon past and future expected input vs output?
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Jan 4, 2016 20:41
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HFX posted:How are you calculating BMR? Are you constantly readjusting it everyday based upon past and future expected input vs output? When I went on this diet I used an online calculator. It took in height, weight, gender, age and spat out BMR as calories. The amount of calories a day that your body uses to function. I did not recalculate it until about 6 months had passed. I lost about 25 lbs.
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Jan 5, 2016 14:20
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TheBalor posted:Perhaps it would help just to have people take mandatory cooking classes at all levels of education? Not just making cookies and cakes in elective home ec classes, but really forcing people to learn how to make a variety of three squares meals from the time they're in elementary school. You could start with having them make sandwiches and salads, and work up to proper entrees and baking. Shift nutritional education from health class to cooking class, and with enough repetition the numbers and portioning would become a lot more intuitive to people, so that they could feed themselves healthily when they're adults. The actual act of cooking isn't that hard though, at least not harder than any other set of instructions. If anything, you'd get better participation by subsidizing/giving away a basic set of cooking equipment.
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Jan 6, 2016 03:36
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/380295471/glutton-for-punishment-by-jack-alvino-and-garo-set I will give this all my monies  quote:GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT is a horror-thriller feature film about an obese man pushed to the edge. A combination of FALLING DOWN, SEVEN, AMERICAN PSYCHO and BREAKING BAD, GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT is a satirical commentary on our weight obsessed culture. It’s a totally fresh, bold, action packed, funny and surprisingly poignant, pulse-pounding horror thriller that doesn’t let up!
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Jan 15, 2016 09:51
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Lovin' the "what are those negroes even complaining, at least the discrimination they're experiencing is 'unacceptable'" vibe.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:27
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I also went from morbidly obese to normal counting calories and exercising. Counting calories can be a pain in the rear end at first but eventually it becomes second nature. I found that I did not have to fight my hunger signals very much. I think that is the big reason this method works for so many people. It is possible to fight hunger signals directly, but strategizing around it is better. In my case though to maintain weight I will have to do hardcore battle with those signals 'till the day I die because of a drug I'm on.
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Jan 15, 2016 22:26
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People become overweight largely due to their diet and exercise habits. There could be some kind of genetic component, however this seems unlikely because while people have not substantially changed genetically over the past century, they have fattened dramatically. Even if some kind of genetic component does impact overweightness/obesity, it definitely doesn't account for 100% of the obesity problem. There's generally a consensus that being overweight/obese is unhealthy, so a societal-level fattening constitutes a dramatic problem that we need to face. Whether or and how we solve this problem remains up to us. "Fat advocates" or whatever they call themselves say that this isn't actually a problem and that we should just let fat people be fat. On a certain level this makes sense to me, because I think we should generally let adults live their chosen lifestyles free from judgement and persecution. That said, a generally unhealthy, unfit population poses risks that we probably shouldn't accept without serious critical thought. Ignoring YLLS-style diet and exercise minutiae, how do we as a society address this problem? The way I see it, we have a few options: 1) Tax/regulate the food industry. This could take a variety of forms including stuff like sugar taxes, more stringent advertising regulations, controlling portion sizes, labeling, etc. 2) Educationally. Teach kids not to eat too much, to eat macro- and micronutrients, and to exercise. Gooning out on a bunch of 2nd graders with the latest bodybuilding blogposts probably won't help, but I guess you could argue otherwise. 3) Culturally. This can take a variety of forms. We could make being fat unacceptable culturally, hopefully shaming people into losing weight. We could culturally reemphasize exercise and physical recreation. We could say gently caress it and turn into Wall-E blobs. We could try to change food culture in some way. Some combined, focused, long-term combination of all three would probably work. I do not think it coincidental that such a movement would closely resemble the movement to end smoking. "Diets" (altering one's diet/exercise to effect bodily change) don't work on a societal level. By this I mean that we can't just tell people to do xyz weight-loss techniques and expect to make any real progress on the issue. There's lots of individuals who decide to lose weight, get fit, and live healthier lifestyles. However, these kinds of dramatic changes are just that: lifestyle changes. People don't change unless they want to (duh?), so the people who want to lose weight more than they like their fattening lifestyles find success. There's the argument that some people just don't know how, but in the context of simply not being overweight (as opposed to sculpting a model's body or whatever), I don't really buy this. The more I think on it the more I feel like we'd need to treat obesity in much the same way that we've reacted to smoking. The big problem lies in the fact that it's easier to distinguish between smokers and the act of smoking than it is to distinguish between fat people and fatness. One can criticize a behavior without criticizing the person doing it. This becomes difficult when a huge part of one's identity intrinsically links the person and the behavior, as is the case here. What does the thread think?
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Jan 16, 2016 01:39
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I think you need to decide whether you are going to convince fat people to become less fat or in making sure both fat and thin people don't create fat children. Culturally I don't know if you can shame a person into being thin, but you can promote healthy habits by praising healthy behaviours. You also need to change the idea of cleaning your plate, getting seconds, having sugar be a reward for "suffering" through healthy food. There are a lot of little cultural things that I think work better on educating adults for the purpose of helping them raise healthier children rather than be healthier themselves (although I imagine it would be a side effect). In a lot of the same ways as anti-smoking efforts may help people to quit smoking, but it's far more likely they are going to prevent people from starting smoking in the first place.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:14
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I agree. People, in aggregate, just don't change enough for the current fat generation to become thin. The question, as you say, then becomes raising thinner, healthier future generations. I wouldn't be surprised if the process of pursuing that future goal also more or less does everything that can be done to combat the obesity epidemic as it currently exists in the present day population. How does one convince fat people that being fat isn't a good thing without making them feel attacked and causing extreme backlash?
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Jan 16, 2016 03:30
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While there is likely a very small minority of fat people who are happy to be fat and also happy to have their children fat (and I honestly don't think anything can be done for those people), most fat people know that being fat loving sucks, and that helping their children not be fat is a legacy that they can pass on, even if they can't manage to do it for themselves. It's not about framing it as you, personally, are terrible, but that here are tools to help you make healthy decisions for your children so they don't fall into the same trap you did, and if in the process you get healthier too, then all the better. People want to do right by their children, and other than people who are crazy, nobody wants to have an obese child and it's a lot easier for someone to prevent being fat than for a fat person to be thin. I think the people who are advocating for the world to accommodate their size are doing so selfishly, because they want the world to be easier for them and they know that changing themselves is really, really difficult because they're already fat. The reason that thin privilege exists as a concept is that it's really hard to be a fat person in the world. It is physically and emotionally painful, and I think the majority of people aren't going to want to put that kind of world on a child if they feel they have some control over it. I think this is where the difference between fatness and being fat is important. If you allow people to separate being fat from being an important part of their identity, then they can look at it as something that is terrible that they have, but it doesn't make them a terrible person, and so as a good person you want to prevent your children from having terrible things happen to them. Exactly like a smoker may not be able to manage quitting smoking themselves, but can still not want their kids to start. This is where shaming becomes extremely counterproductive, because it ties someone to their weight. It tells that that you are not a person, you are a fat person, that is who you are and so other people can make all kinds of judgments about your character because of it. It's all anyone sees when they look at you, so therefore that must be all that you are. Then when you try to say that fatness is bad, you're saying the person themselves is bad, and most people will become defensive in that situation.
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Jan 16, 2016 04:40
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Asiina posted:This is where shaming becomes extremely counterproductive, because it ties someone to their weight. It tells that that you are not a person, you are a fat person, that is who you are and so other people can make all kinds of judgments about your character because of it. It's all anyone sees when they look at you, so therefore that must be all that you are. Then when you try to say that fatness is bad, you're saying the person themselves is bad, and most people will become defensive in that situation. shame or stigma appeals, as they're referred to in communication science, are an ongoing area of highly contentious research. The usual problem is that message interventions that are designed to make people not want to become overweight also stigmatize those who are overweight. It's not my area of focus, but a part of the difficulty is that the ethical calculus is shifted somewhat in other contexts, particularly involving addictive substance use. They became popular in antitobacco circles in the 90s, in particular- they can be effective (sometimes) in fighting cultural enshrinement of the behavior or state- the fear that the negative thing will actually become appealing to newcomers. You can see how that would be especially appealing for antitobacco or pot researchers and policymakers. Application of stigma messages to overweight is a much tougher goal, and much harder to justify. I've written a bit about some of the side-effects of stigma interventions in this earlier post.
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Jan 16, 2016 06:15
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Stigma against drug use is less cruel because drugs aren't "part" of you. Shaming fat people is more cruel because they are literally being told their own self - their body - is bad. This creates self -hatred.
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Jan 16, 2016 16:14
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Crystal Geometry posted:People become overweight largely due to their diet and exercise habits. There could be some kind of genetic component, however this seems unlikely because while people have not substantially changed genetically over the past century, they have fattened dramatically 2. You're presenting a false dichotomy that is completely missing the key facts of the situation. In general, the ratio of moving to eating determines how fat you are. How much you eat and how much you move is entirely determined by genes, environment, plus the mythical spirit entity "free will". 3. Similarly, how much eating less and moving more than your natural inclination and habits make you do sucks for you as well as your capacity to, by the exertion of willpower, still move more and eat less is entirely determined by your genes, environment, and magical spirit power.
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Jan 16, 2016 16:35
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BarbarianElephant posted:Stigma against drug use is less cruel because drugs aren't "part" of you. Shaming fat people is more cruel because they are literally being told their own self - their body - is bad. This creates self -hatred. True, but a distinction can be made between you as a person and your body. Thin or really swole people aren't necessarily good people just because their bodies are in good performance, so then why can't the argument be made that fat people aren't awful people? Fat people can still be kind and generous and funny and loving and hard working and all sorts of positive things. They probably have some character flaws that let them become fat, but that is not all they are. If you want to bring it around to educating fat parents to not have fat children, then you need to appeal to them as responsible and loving parents who want to do the best for their children. Doing that builds a person up and acknowledges a lot of the ways that they are good people with good traits, and that being fat is just one bad part rather than the entirety of all of them. If you can successfully make this separation you can talk all about how harmful fatness is without hurting the egos of people who are fat and making them defensive and unwilling to listen. But honestly, fat people know how bad being fat is. You really don't need to tell them that much.
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Jan 16, 2016 17:20
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