How should we cut obesity?

[BrilloPad]

Sounds like new-age nonsense to me. Coffee is an infusion of beans in water, which must be extremely natural and healthy.

Butter, bacon and beer are all perfectly fine, people have been eating those for centuries without getting fat. It's only the balance which is important.

I always think beef is processed grass - which makes it a vegetarian option.

[JRCT]

As someone whose weight is in a total state of flux, and from a family of people that are in a similar state, I have some slight sympathy with the genes arguement.

However, I also know when I'm going through a fat phase and what makes it happen. It's laziness on my part, simple as that. And no matter what my genes or internal biology is doing, I have lived with my body more than anyone. I'm the only one that's always there when I shove a cake down my neck or when I go for a 10 mile run.

I know what each of those things does to my body, particularly if I whack it into repeat mode.

Cake, cake cake makes me O
Run, run, run makes me I

So, I think what I'm saying is. When I'm fat it's my fault and I know it.

Only I can stop the cakes and start the running, or whatever it is I know that works for me.

Everyone else has to take that same responsibility or they'll just be fat forever. And I say let them crack on and take the consequences.

[d000hg]

It's true that even if you put on weight very easily, and have to be extra vigilant, it's your responsibility - them's the breaks as with life in general.

But the whole obsession in our culture with "being healthy" and "being overweight" is also not great. The number who are grossly obese is still a minority as opposed to those who now we look down at as "fat" who in previous generations would've just been "plump" or "well padded". Telling middled aged men off for having a bit of a beer belly, etc.

There's the health side, and the rest of it, and sometimes it seems the actual health side is in danger of being swamped over obsessions with counting calories, sodium levels, not looking like a Californian actor, etc.

[vetran]

In evolutionary terms we haven't even caught up with using fire yet (probably).

It's a fallacy that just because something is made in a factory and/or doesn't normally exist in nature, it's bad, whereas anything made by hand is good. Some sort of hippie legacy IMO, or the greenie propaganda.

there have been a number of documented cases where food has been adulterated to improve profit.

We have also modified food to remove a lot of the goodness in modern recipes e.g. hamburgers and chicken nuggets.

Great food can be made in a factory but so can really bad food you would struggle to make at home. We should manage out the pink goo etc as its not good for us.

So in conjunction with encouraging the populace to eat healthily we can encourage manufacturers to make healthily.

[d000hg]

What constitutes "good" and "bad" doesn't seem well defined though. The common thing seems to be to show what food looks like when being made in a big commercial process, or to use terms like "processed" and "reclaimed" and use that as evidence it's not good for you without explaining why. ANY large-scale food process is pretty gross I imagine - even the whisky distillery I visited the empty beer vats stank something awful. The processes for making cheese are probably horrible too.

If you put ingredients in a saucepan over a wood stove and stir with a wooden spoon, it looks wonderful. If you put exactly the same ingredients, scaled up 10,000X, into a massive industrial vat it looks pretty grim, even though the latter is probably much cleaner and more tightly controlled. Separating out the science from the gut instinct (!) is not too easy.

[vetran]

What constitutes "good" and "bad" doesn't seem well defined though. The common thing seems to be to show what food looks like when being made in a big commercial process, or to use terms like "processed" and "reclaimed" and use that as evidence it's not good for you without explaining why. ANY large-scale food process is pretty gross I imagine - even the whisky distillery I visited the empty beer vats stank something awful. The processes for making cheese are probably horrible too.

If you put ingredients in a saucepan over a wood stove and stir with a wooden spoon, it looks wonderful. If you put exactly the same ingredients, scaled up 10,000X, into a massive industrial vat it looks pretty grim, even though the latter is probably much cleaner and more tightly controlled. Separating out the science from the gut instinct (!) is not too easy.

I think its pretty clear not adding lots of salt and sugar to cover poor quality ingredients or using ingredients that you wouldn't put in your mouth if you saw them would be a good start.

It is entirely possible industrial processes can be much more healthy for you than home cooking but adding lots of preservatives and cheap bulk fillers is endemic.

Price is also a driver most supermarket discounts are on foods with poor nutritional value.

[suityou01]

I was dieting, and had to adjust my calorie intake to under 1000 calories per day, without beer, just to lose weight. Which isn't much fun.

So I decided, once being diagnosed with hypertension to rev the engine a little bit. Using interval training to build cardio fitness quickly. I noticed for around 30 minutes 3 times a week I am shedding weight with ease.

It turns out this HIIT has far more impact than a steady slog on a treadmill.

EPOC: The Secret to Faster Fat Loss? - Life by DailyBurn

These high-intensity training sessions force the body to work harder to build its oxygen stores back up — for a period of 16 to 24 hours post-workout, research suggests. The result: more calories burned than if you’d exercised at a lower intensity for the same (or longer) period of time. Think about it like maxing out your credit card: During rest, your body has to work hard to clear away the lactic acid and pay back its oxygen debt. Exactly how much you can burn after exercising directly correlates to the duration and intensity of your workout, says DailyBurn trainer Anja Garcia, RN, MSN.

[d000hg]

I was dieting, and had to adjust my calorie intake to under 1000 calories per day, without beer, just to lose weight. Which isn't much fun.

Ouch. Was that including exercise or 1000 + anything you burned off?

[suityou01]

Ouch. Was that including exercise or 1000 + anything you burned off?

Well at the time I wasn't going to the gym or anything so exercise was just walking to and from work. It just showed me that my calorific burn was extremely low. This 2500 a day for men is utter bolox.

Then in an effort to get fit quick, I noticed this rather handy side effect. So I'm going to stick at it.

Tonight I shall do a medium intensity workout, and then some kettle bells.

Then tomorrow night HIIT. And Friday and Sunday. With more moderate exercise in between times.

[VectraMan]

What is processed food exactly? You always hear about it, but I'm never sure what it means or whether I eat any of it. Just had a Tesco chicken and bacon sandwich which was probably made in a factory. Is that processed? What if I cooked chicken and bacon and put it into a sandwich myself?

I lost about three stone in a couple of years due to illness, and then got most of it back in 2 months following surgery. I was a little concerned that at that rate I was going to be 20 stone after another 6 months, but that hasn't happened and it seems my body knew exactly what my normal weight was and got me back there. And all the time eating more or less the same things. I don't think what I eat or exercise has ever made a difference.