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Study Proves Having Fat Friends Makes You Fat
Xemu writes "Having fat friends makes you fat, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California says after after examining 12,067 individuals and 38,611 of their relatives and friends. In same-sex friendships, people were 71 per cent more likely to put on weight if a friend of theirs became obese. "It's not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with. Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship," says Harvard professor Nicholas Christakis."
...doesn't make you fat, does it?
** heads to Walmart to buy ammo **
and a large shovel.
This has been well known since the 80s
You want to go out to eat *again*!? Well, sure, I'll come along. I'm not hungry though. Maybe I'll just have some mozzarella sticks.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
In other news, reading dumb posts on slashdot makes you dumber.
I'm still waiting for my article to be published.
Tomorrow I'm having lunch with my best buddy, Steve Ballmer. Should I be worried?
CowboyNeal must be fat.
just another excuse for the many fat people eating daily at fast food restaurants
There are a bunch of fatties where I work. They are always bringing boxes of donuts, organizing birthday cakes for people (oh christ we have more birthday cakes in 3 months than we have employees), always trying to get you to go out to lunch with them. You know why they do it? To try to justify their need to eat like shit. They figure if everyone else is doing it, then it's ok. Same with your fatty friends. They always have loads of snack food around, eat junk food, etc. Trying to get you to eat at McDonalds, etc.
If you are healthy and fit and hang around fatties, don't fall for their fatty ways. Beware, alert, and you will not become one of them.
Correlation does not mean causation... 'nuff said.
Eating is a social activity as well as a biological necessity. It's logical and obvious that hanging around with and seeing people right next to you in the same room comfortably stuffing their faces with delicious food, lots of it, will strongly suggest joining in on the same tasty chow. If you see them eat yummies many, many times, you'll quite likely eat more many, many times as well. It's a double whammy for all the most disciplined, self-fulfilled individuals.
... I ... I ... have to go cook something fatty and delicious ....
Dammit, now
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Just as people drive SUVs in order to feel safer sharing the road with other drivers in SUVs people gain weight in order to feel safer alongside other people who are big and fat and might otherwise crush them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
...If my friends hear about this, they'll start abandoning me in droves...
I am not left-handed, either!
Does having dumb friends make you dumb?
as if fit folks would hang out with fat folks in the first place
I really dislike these types of 'studies' because they can be grossly misleading. The same data sets can allow you to draw to correlate a number of conclusions, neither one of which could be correct.
Maybe people that are prone to obesity are also prone to be friends with people that are prone to obesity.
Or, be default, maybe people that remain skinny when their friends get fat break the relationship because they don't like to be friends with fat people, and therefore the only friends the fat person has left are the ones that ended up putting on weight.
The point is, Correlation does not equal Causation.
Fat people are the last minority that you can get away discriminating against in our society and it is sickening. Cut it out, skinny.
And I always assumed it was a herding instinct.
"Having fat friends makes you fat" implies that if you have fat friends, you have no choice but to become fat. This is untrue. Article is, once again, idiotic and pure flamebait.
Way to go, samzenpus. Slashdot, sigh.
Ugh, now it's going to be that much harder to make friends. :'(
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
Keeping up with the Jonesing
That fat people are cylons ? Prepare to jump to the next Ballys!!!
Of all the half baked research out there, this has got to be the lamest excuse for the fat epidemic ever. It's hard to find people who are not fat in a country that is well on track to a population that's 75% obese. If what the friendship connection is true, then a single fat person would inevitably make the whole country fat. There's has been a real change in the US population since the 80's. It's not genetic, it's not that people are suddenly lazy, and it's not because obesity is somehow more catching now than it was thirty years ago - it's the poison big food is selling you, and the 60 hour work weeks being extracted by every other big employer. The most disgusting example of this is childhood obesity caused by "school meals". This is one of the biggest reasons US life spans are comparable to Cuba's.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My guess would be that there's a sort of positive reinforcement when it comes to weight. If you're surrounded by fat people, you'll feel more comfortable with yourself, and you won't change. Contrast this with (in theory) goes on as far as negative reaction - reaction to scorn drives you to change.
I couldn't find the direct causal link mentioned above in the article.. just that they couldn't figure out what was the link.. and it doesn't seem that hard to dream up some explanations..
example: You work at a company, your friends work at the same company, company goes bankrupt, you all grow fatter at the same time.
exampl2: You go to college, your friends are of your age, and also go to college, you all grow a beer belly.
It's what you choose to do. Period.
If your metabolism slows down, eat less, exercise more - as long as your body isn't so badly out of shape that taking 3 steps will kill you. There was this show on TLC about people with weight problems. One woman was working out crazy with help of trainers and doctors, eating extremely well, as little calories as was possible yet she was unable to lose any weight. In fact, sometimes she even gained a few pounds. If I recall correctly, it was some thyroid problem that cut back heavily on some hormone production and this caused her body to "believe" she was constantly starving so her metabolism slowed down to a crawl.
Ok, to counter the first 20 or so posts that, in a nutshell, say "You'll get fat if you're always eating out with your fat friends", I have to say RTFA!! The correlation between your weight and your friends' weights is just as strong when your friends are hundreds of miles away. You're not going out to eat with your cross-country friends. I'm not stepping up here to say the study is definitive causation; I just wanted to point out to the majority of the posts already made that this is not from the simple reason that you eat with your friends.
And those depressed people? They need to cheer up. It's all about the choices they made dammit. Quit blaming others.
Smokers? They need to stop smoking! It's all about the choices they made dammit. Quit blaming others.
Skinny geeks? They need to get more exercise and eat better food! It's all about the choices they made dammit. Quit blaming others.
I really wish that scientists and doctors would quit trying to hand out excuses.
Too many people today blame anyone or anything but themselves for the dilemmas they find themselves in.
Since this is a statistical study, and does not have a control group, this proves correlation only. It may simply be that people who are prone to obesity like to hang out together (you don't have to be obese to be prone to obesity, but you may develop it later). In order to have control, you would have to select people's friends for them. You would have to take a random sample of the population and pare some with randomly selected individuals (this is your control group) and pair others with obese individuals (this is your test group). This is the ONLY way to prove causality.
I'm going to protest against your discrimination! It's not that I'm the main cause of my obesity, it's everyone else's fault! I should sue them for trying to make me eat more!
If you are hanging around with gay people you probably are gay.
While it's useful for an individual to know how to work around something, it's also important for policy makers (or even doctors) to know the most efficient ways to educate individuals or structure programs. I can envision how, for example, it would be a good thing if a set of studies showed a causal link the article's study suggests and that education programs started to encourage individuals to help educate their friends.
Mod up
No one is making excuses. They're making observations.
They're not claiming that fat rubs off from one person onto another. But friends engage in similar behaviors to one another - that's socialization. The scientists' observation will apply less to those with strong will and more to those who follow group behaviors. Nothing in what these scientists have observed contradicts the idea of personal responsibility; they're making the rather bland discovery that people tend to act like those with whom they identify and those with whom they enjoy spending time. You sound a little too quick to jump the gun with the fed-up borderline-hostile response.
That being said, while weight and physical health are more dependent on personal choices than most would like to believe, to discount the impact of biological and genetic factors outright is just silly. Personal choice has an influence, as do circumstances beyond the person's control; how much is to blame for a given case depends on the person.
In other words, yes, the study PROVES causality.
do phat friends make you phat?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
We all know that in the end you make your own choices about eating habits/exercise, but the study sheds some light on the effects of social situations and peers on your choices.
This is psychology, which effects all of us. And they did do a scientific study. Why would someone make a bad choice? There are more interesting answers than the standard, intellectually lazy "it's their own damn fault. period.".
Hands in my pocket
I don't think they are handing out excuses. What they are saying is that people who hang out with lazy people don't exercise and don't eat well often don't exercise and don't eat well themselves. I imagine the same would also apply. If you hang out with people who eat vegan food and play soccer all day, then by doing what they do, you will probably stay pretty slim and in shape. Nobody is saying that you can't hang out with the fatties and remain skinny, or that you can't hang out with the vegan soccer players and gain weight, but that the people you hang out with can effect whether or not you are healthy. I also think it's kind of stupid that scientist try to find reasons or correlating actions to being overweight. We've figured this out a long time ago. Eat less (in terms of calories, not volume/weight of food), and exercise more and you will lose weight. Do the opposite, and you will gain weight. Very simple.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
People's "intelligence" on this issue continues to amaze me. What does AA tell you to do? Stop hanging out with alcoholics because you are more likely to repeat your behavior if you do. What does NA tell you to do? Stop hanging out with druggies because you are more likely to relapse. If you go to OA (Over-eaters Anon.) I'm guessing they tell you something similar.
People follow their peers to a degree. People gain some weight, their friends see it and lose a little stigma of gaining weight, so they do, and the cycle repeats. If you are fat, you are more likely to hang out with other fat people. Thin people are more likely to not eat as much as you. They are more likely to give you a look for complaining about gaining weight while stuffing your face. Other fat people are likely to sympathize with you. After all, to tell you otherwise would be hypocritical (if they don't follow it) or "mean" (if they are working on it).
Do you wonder why when you see families at malls they are usually all thin or all fat? It's not genes. Maybe that contributes some, but mostly it is diet. If the mom cooks healthy most of the time, the family will be exposed to that very often. If the dad exercises a lot, the kids and mom will be exposed to that. If they just buy fast food and junk all the time and snack lots, the kids will learn those behaviors. I'd bet the relation between close relatives in the same house is about the same as the relation between adoptive parents and children. The habits the kids/family learn are a huge part of things.
I've lost a ton of weight. I didn't have a lot of tolerance for this before, and I'm losing what I have. The causes of obesity are not a mystery. They have been known for a LONG time. There are recent things that contribute (fast food, maybe HFCS, etc), but it is still no mystery. I'd peg it at mostly willpower and intolerance of anything that isn't fun or easy or doesn't feel good; an attitude that is becoming more and more common.
Our attitude has changed. Being fat is much more accepted now. People complain about the "unfair standard" on TV, but it's not like you have no choice. I'll agree the near anorexic models are not realistic, but more and more people seem to be moving into "the blob" territory. I've seen more than a few ultra-obiese people on scooters recently, something I don't remember seeing even 10 years ago.
It's people's fault. For most people it isn't fate. I see people who want to lose weight. Lots. Just about all complain. "I can't lose weight." Yet they continue to not exercise (or they do for about a week and then give it up). They either don't change their eating habits, give up the change after a week or two (which actually makes things worse for you), or change to eating "healthy" and end up eating constantly so the calories are just spread out over the day instead of in 3 huge meals. You don't need gastric bypass surgery. You don't need a miracle diet drug. You don't need a new diet food.
To use make my point in an extreme way, how many people in bad POW camps were overweight. How many in areas with food shortage problems? How many people in the old prison work camps or working in coal mines were overweight? Basically none because these people either got very few calories, or burned a ton. Now some of these fates are horrific, but it proves that basically anyone can lose weight. These days there are only a few people who I would excuse from this requirement, and those are some people on very serious prescription drugs that have strong side effects.
What does diet food do any way? As diet food became more common, people ate more of it. Each cookie may have had fewer calories, but a great many people made up for that with quantity. If someone did invent another miracle pill (something akin to Fen-Phen without the problems), I'm guessing most people would eventually start to gain weight again because they would start to eat more later. I think this is just like how many people who pay off debt with 2nd mortgages get back into debt.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Friends do this thing called "hanging out." This means they tend to go the same places and participate in the same activities. If some of these activities are prone to making people gain weight, then the group as friends as a whole will have a propensity for gaining weight. Not as a hard and fast rule, but more of a statistical reality.
The name Ric Romero comes to mind.
"If your metabolism slows down, eat less" Err, eating less (and eating less frequently) will make your metabolism slow down even further. Apart from that, how was that post modded interesting?
Yes, there are some rare cases. However, the majority of fat people are not fat because of a thyroid problem. Using rare cases as a counterexample is not a very good argument. Almost 1/3 of the people in the US are obese. That's disgusting. Thyroid problems do not account for that high of a percentage of people being overweight.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Obese is average in America (and many other places). I didn't know how much weight I really need to lose until I lost about 40-50 pounds. If you'd asked me before I lost that weight, I would've told you that I probably only needed to lose 10 pounds or so, and used some stock large frame excuse. I'm not "rail thin skinny" now, either. I lifted weights while losing weight and so didn't lose any muscle.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Correlation does not imply causation.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Really?
And is your statement based on actual science, or simply your need to feel that because you aren't fat then you aren't weak and are therefore superior? You've made all the right decisions then, eh?
Actually, when you when you said "It's what you choose to do. Period." the period really made me think you must be right, and totally disregard the recent studies I read in the journal Nature (21 December 2006, in particular). Afterall, you're so firm in your statement there's no way you can be wrong, even if you have nothing but your 'deep down feelings' to back yourself up.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
Mod parent up. You've just summed up everything that is wrong with this country. Everyone wants to blame someone else for their problems.
Gun control advocates want to blame guns but not the people that use them irresponsibly.
We blame companies for low paying jobs(i.e. Walmart) but we keep buying stuff from them.
We eat cheap junk food and sit around watching TV all day, drive places we could have walked and then wonder why we're fat.
The people I admire the most are those who take responsibility for their own life. I know a guy that use to be 60 lbs over weight. He decided to take care of himself and now rides his bicyle to work for a round trip of 40 miles a day. Guess what, he lost all that extra weight.
Until we hold ourselves accountable for how we contribute to society things will not get better. So pick one thing and work on it until you accomplish it and then move on to something else. You'll be amazed how much you can make a difference.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
But I have no friends, yet I'm still fat ?
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Dear fat friend, It's been nice knowing you but unfortunately I read Slashdot today. They said you're bad for me. Maybe you should use this alone time to get in shape. See ya when you're thin, Concerned (It's-you-not-me) Friend
It's what you choose to do. Period.
If your metabolism slows down, eat less, exercise more - as long as your body isn't so badly out of shape that taking 3 steps will kill you. But that's probably the result of 20 years being overweight (~235lbs) without attributable cause. I eat properly with only rare cheats (one snack once a month max) and I exercise regularly. At one point my metabolism was so high that I radiated enough heat that you could feel it if you stood close. That was the result of 6-day/wk training with large weights and heavy cardio. I do have my ebbs and peaks on the fitness front but guess what, even at my previous peak when I was able to run 7KM/h for 45 min straight and bench press 350lbs, I was still not able to get weight below 207lbs or body-fat reading below 20% . I should have been able to since I'm nominally supposed to weigh in the range of 180 according to the experts..
So clearly something genetic must be in play.
I would say it seems the nature/nurture debate is back on - though it is possible to control or at least minimize the nurture in this specific case and while I do not specifically support or deny the research; at least it's being done!
Ok, you are a typical idiot, but I will even elaborate with a story. I had a girlfriend in high school. We dated for a little over three years. Being young and nieve, I always wanted to be with her. Before I go further, she was heavy... ~5' 6", 200lbs. I was 5' 7", 130lbs. After school, she would WALK from her house to pick me up, we would WALK back to her house, she would WALK me home, then WALK home herself. Now this is the part where you have to pay attention. I am not exaggerating in the slightest... in my parents car, one way to her house was 6.2 miles. We walked on the very sidewalks along said roads. That is almost 25 miles of walking... in ONE DAY. And we did this practically EVERY DAY (I liked the sex, she was needy). And here is the best part... she never ate lunch at school. She usually had dinner at my house.
She never lost an ounce of weight. She went through a lot of shoes though.
Eat less and excersize more doesn't always cut it. First hand I have SEEN this.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It's truly dumb to make it sound like you're outraged because the study says your fat friends will make you fat if they touch you.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Why am I not surprised.
I love being thin. I guess that makes me racist.
You know, I just got my karma back up to excellent, and along comes an article that just demands that I piss it all away.
Every time you get a scientist that rolls out with crap like this, people are less likely to trust any scientist. "Scientist" is a brand, of sorts, just as surely as Nike or Apple, and things like this just undermine the brand.
It makes me wonder if, the Earth is warming up simply because it is next to Mars, which is also warming up. If it can work for people, then why not planets? Whose going to argue against that "logic"? A scientist? What? The same one that says someone is fat because his friend is fat?
This is my sig.
This sort of attitude always bothers me.
First,glad to know that you have done your own extensive, scientific study. I guess it is a shame you just have not released it yet. We all await it eagerly, i can tell you.
Secondly, the real problem with the argument that everyone chooses everything they do is that there is some truth to it. There is more untruth, but that sliver is something people gasp and never let go. An example which you will like ignore follows:
25% of the population lack a gene. This lack means that it is harder for them to get enjoyment from smoking. It also makes it easier to quit when they try. By your logic that gene has nothing to do with it and it is merely a choice. However, without knowing ANYTHING else about a group of people except whither or not they lack the gene, i can predict more accurately how hard it will quit then someone who knows nothing. This is not a question of will power but of biology.
People are not created equal, people have different needs and tolerances. Something YOU can control someone else can not. Not because it is a flaw, but because they are not you. You maybe able to eat or not eat as is your whim yet maybe you can not control your anger. We are a messy, wiggly species with the most convoluted lump of matter in the universe between our ears. And you think you control it.
You are not in control of everything in you life, you do not choose to do everything you do. Your heart beats, your feet sweat, your hair grows. People being made aware of the things that shape their lives is nothing but good. People who are social around each tend to do the same sort of things,in a natural and HEALTHY way. This study underlines that.
Your hard line stance is wrong, does nothing to help and merely contains a note of derision and contempt. I hope you learn to accept the things that are beyond your control.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
Fine, I choose not to be under psychological stress every day. I choose not to listen to those that somehow think they have magical will power that I do not. I choose not to wreck my body with constant up and down weight changes or stress induced illnesses. All of which studies show occurs to the obese when the try to lose weight and not the blessed thin. Have you bothered to read a study on the successes of diet? After 5 years the rate is so low as to be statistically insignificant. What is worse is the damage done to these peoples' body by this exceeds the health risks of the weight they are trying to lose in the first place. For what ever reason some people cannot control their weight and some small fraction can. For reasons that do no correlate to will power, in fact many obese people are among the most strongly willed people on earth. That is why so many die from the stress induced illnesses long before their weight takes their lives. The pathetic idea put forward that some how thin people have the will power to be thing and obese people just choose to be fat is ignorant at best and arrogant at worst. Some day the reasons for obesity will come out. Just like they did for mental illness, diabetes, and ulcers. Each of which came with these same types of stigmas.
p
A example study.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/67422.ph
On another note, given this so called friend effect seems to be able to affect friends of friends even those that live at great distances, did this researcher compare this to the spread of a contagion before making wild assumptions about a socially spread behavior?
I'm suspicious of this fat-friends-make-you-fat story. Heard 'experts' on radio this morning repeating this story, using words like 'infectious', 'contagious'. Smacks of Sensationalist Journalism, and Susy Public will go away thinking she'll get fat if she sits next to a fat person.
7 /1969924.htm
This on the other hand is a much better story:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/200
It's an interview with Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. He says, yes, we're getting fat, but the question is why our bodies don't enact a defense against this. One of the culprits: Fructose (Corn Syrup) which food and drink manufacturers have been putting in everything. Your body has real problems regulating this. Fructose with Fibre is ok (an Orange), but without Fibre it's very bad (Orange Juice). Apart from the vitamins, you might as well be drinking pop. Very interesting link: transcript and MP3.
I guess you're one of those rare people where the environment has no impact on their behavior, huh? The thing is, us mere mortals find that the choices we make are influenced by a wide variety of environmental factors. That doesn't mean that we can't fight those influences, but to ignore those influences is to set yourself up for failure.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So, using their bad statistics... we would all have been fat hundreds if not thousands of years ago, because our modern diet and sedentary life/work-style has nothing to do with modern obesity.
Though I will admit that exercising works best as a social activity, rather than trying to pit your lone willpower against aches and uncomfortable exercising. Exercising is also pretty boring and doesn't stimulate our minds.
I'd say that's my personal problem with trying to exercise is that I get too easily distracted by things that are interesting.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
How much do you want to bet that nearly every person upset by the GP is either fat or fucking someone fat?
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Was she drinking a lot of soda?
What would happen if she stopped eating completely? I'm not saying she should, I'm just wondering if the thyroid problem would cause her to die overweight? Or would her body eventually feed on itself?
All I'm saying is, you didn't see any fat people in Auschwitz...
There's a simpler explanation - fat people seek out fatter people as friends, so they won't look so fat when they stand beside them.
You might laugh, but its true. Fat people can't easily strike up friendships with skinny people. They don't do the same things. How is a skinny person going to play tennis with a fat person? Or long walks? Or roller blading? Or riding a bike? Or even long shopping trips at the mall ... Or anything else that doesn't involve sitting more or less motionless ...
So fat people hang out with fat people, both because they are looking for assurance that they themselves aren't as fat as some other people, and because they don't have all that many options.
So of course, when you get fat people together, they reinforce each others habits of inactivity and over-eating ... so yes, fat friends will make you fat(ter).
BTW - if you're fat and don't have any friends fatter than you, you're the one that fat people want to stand beside when its time to take pictures. Time to cut out the crap food, the too-big portions, the second helpings, and start starving yourself, because nothing else will work. And no, you don't have a glandular problem - you got that way one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
Well no, not like a virus.
I honestly don't see why your claim, and the results of the study, should be considered mutually exclusive. One's choices can change as one sheds or adopts different memes (culturally-transmittable patterns of behaviour.) Hanging around with people that thoughtlessly cram their mouths could easily cause your mirror neurons to gravitate towards the same pattern of behaviour -- effecting the choices that you make. It's much better to live consciously (practicing mindfulness that is) and a person doing so could harmlessly hang around fat people, I'm sure. But how many Thich Nhat Hanh's do your really know? I'm sure they're the exception to the rule.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
The cycle is a resonance involving hormones. Based on this fact alone, one can conclude that hormone-based alignment is possible.
If the periods of the periods greatly differ, alignment might be more difficult. Obviously an alignment would require living in close quarters for a long time. (share the bed, eat all meals together, share clothes, etc.)
I would substitute unmotivated for fat. If all the people that have a problem with Bush would get off their asses and do something to impeach him, he'd have been out a long time ago.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Exactly, everybody knows that you can't argue with cold hard Truthiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness
Yo, Ding-Dong. Ding-Dong, man. Ding-Dong, yo!
$ make work
make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
I helped staff a convention for the Texas Association for School Nutrition (The Lunch Lady Club), and by god, those were some of the ugliest, fattest women I'd ever seen. Not a single woman under 200 pounds, I swear. We sold Tshirts and I was shocked to find out that they stocked almost entirely 4XL tshirts, and less than 10 mediums (for a convention of 2500 people). They tended to roam about with other women from their local TASN chapter, and within their band of heffers, they all seemed to be roughly the same circumference, as if one of them had gotten that large, so the others decided it was ok to let themselves to That Much More.
Suprisingly clean and stink-free, though.
moox. for a new generation.
not your own weak constition that can't handle not eating like a pig. More of the typical lack of responsibility for one's own actions. Move on nothing to see here.
What you've quoted describes an observational study, one in which you observe outcomes but can't or don't intervene. Correlation can be because one of the outcomes causes the other, but in order to prove causality you need to perform controlled experiments in which you can vary potential causal factors and observe the effects of your intervention. You cannot prove causality with observational studies because there is always the possibility of spurious correlation (things just happened to happen together) or of some unobserved factor being an underlying cause for both the phenomena that you think are linked. For example, in Finland the number of deaths per month by drowning and the monthly per-capita consumption of ice cream are very strongly correlated. Does that mean that eating ice cream increases the hazard of drowning? No, it means that Finns eat ice cream more frequently during the same months they go swimming, i.e., in the summer. The actual cause in both cases is the seasonality of both behaviors.
Parent is informative.
/does/ know what it's like in their own head, and they're the ones who have to be the harshest on themselves. They'll be the one who will have to deal with the results. So if fitness is easy for someone else, bully for them. If it's hard for you, you have to suck it up and deal with it because it won't just go away.
People like to down on fatties all day for being lazy. How many of them actually work for the body they have?
-I'm 5'10. I weigh 220lbs by eating till I don't want to eat, and with no exercise.
-I weigh 180lbs by lifting 3 days a week and cardio 4 days a week. I bench 315, squat around 600. I eat to sufficiency rather than to satisfaction. There is still 18% body fat there. No six pack.
Many of the people who are so quick to jump to conclusions have no idea what the other person is up to. I've been a fatty, and I've been an athlete, and I'm the only one who can tell you which is the real me.
How easy is it to resist something when it's easy? How hard is it to resist when it's hard? Quitting smoking is very different between the lifetime smoker and the guy who's never smoked. You don't know what it's like in their head, so don't pretend to.
But with that said, each person
I hear what you're saying, but I think it's more than a sliver of truth. Sure, with genetics you can predict with relatively high accuracy a person's smoking behavior. But there are some people who overcome that genetic tendency anyways. This is true with many genetic and social tendencies. And isn't that ability to exercise one's will what makes us human?
In general I agree with you that people have very different strengths and weaknesses and stronger tendencies than we sometimes like to admit. But I also believe that a person can stop, take a look at themselves, and work on changing something. They may even succeed. It's rare, but it's possible. And to me, that's a more important fact than just pointing out that we are what we are.
Cheers.
Anybody with a big fat wang wanna be my friend?
If it's OK to get fat, because a friend is doing it, then it's much easier. The answer is we should get the friend to do cocaine, and then both fatties will slim up.
And exercising will make your metabolism speed up. And the muscles you grow while exercising will, all on their own, even when they're not being actively used, burn up more calories than the fat they replace. There are two things that make you lose weight, and they work best when used together. Eat less. Exercise more. It's not freakin' rocket science.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
The question is, is willpower something you can take responsibility for? Or is "I don't have the discipline to exercise and control my eating habits" a valid excuse in today's huggy cuddly validate-my-lifestyle society? What if someone doesn't have the willpower to *work on* their willpower?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
again - choices..
lemmings die enmasse....
people follow people, if they choose to...
personal choice - aside from the above stated thyroid issue - which yes, I forgot about - or others like that - where your body rebels, is the key.
You choose to eat that 3rd (or 13th) slice of pizza. You choose to have that extra plate of spaghetti. You choose to have the double shot mocha latte with whipped cream.
If your friends smoke, do you smoke? If your friends drink, do you drink?
It's all about choices, and personal responsibility.
Every time we turn around there's some new study, probably government funded, to show how the people have no control over their lives, or actions, so new government programs can be developed to guide (control) the populace. Education programs? (brainwashing, possibly)
If you're told something enough times, you tend to believe it, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds.
So yes, I am fed-up. I am somewhat hostile. I am not a troll. I am not flame-baiting. I was speaking from personal experience.
Choices could be equated to a simple physical law. For every choice you make, there is a result. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Actually, the issue is the culture. Never before in the history of humanity has there been such a supply of cheap food without the need to work hard and get exercise. Never before has famine become almost non-existent, due to the ease of transporting food. The human mind just isn't built to handle this. It's designed to eat when there is food, because soon there won't be food, or because the amount of energy required to get the food completely counteracts the food. Only when you have people who don't need to work (physically, anyways) to be fed will you have fat people. (Obviously, all of the generalizations above refer to countries where they are true. In 3rd-world countries, you don't have these issues, and hence you don't have as many fat people. But I'm sure that that's a very minor consolation for starvation and malnutrition).
Everything is subjective.
Going to the gym or doing other physical activity regularly (4-5 times per week) at the same time as cutting out the junk (i.e. only eat the stuff your body _needs_) would probably be a lot more helpful than going on a starvation diet. Starve yourself and the body goes into self preservation mode; the moment you start eating again it will put it on like as if you're in for another period of starvation next.
If you make exercise a daily thing, you can enjoy a very healthy appetite. For all beer drinkers out there, some of the new low carb ones are phenomenal stuff - we've got Carlton's Pure Blondes in Australia and they're great.
ISO certified == THX certified
I stand corrected. I'd forgotten about hypothyroidism. Even have 2 aunts who have it, and are on medication for it.
my bad.
Outside of extreme conditions like that however, choices are still the #1 reason for weight issues.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
They're arguing that there's a causal correlation -- not that individuals can't excempt themselves from being one of the cases acting in accordance with the trend. It's like as study that says that eating McDonalds once a day makes you fat. To use your logic, such a study would be BS because people who eat McDonalds daily can work out for a few hours and counteract the effect. Obviously, that study would not mean that people who eat McDonalds once a day can't possibly lose weight -- and likewise, this one does not in fact imply that people who hang out with fat people can't lose weight either; in claiming otherwise, you're setting up an intentionally easy-to-knock-down strawman.
As for me, my personal experience leaves me inclined to trust this study's results. When I was in college, I lost a lot of weight without consciously thinking about it (or changing my diet, which was dictated by my personal finances, and thus fairly constant, at the time) when I was chasing after a thin woman, to the point where some ex-roommates referred to me as "half of Duff" when meeting me in the library; that trend ended roughly when our friendship became more distant and I was less focused on getting her attention.
So -- I'm perfectly willing to believe that, in the absence of other factors, hanging out with thin people makes it easier for one to lose weight without making conscious decisions to do so, and that hanging out with fat people gives one a predisposition towards gaining weight. Obviously, neither of these is foolproof -- failing to exercise will have a bigger influence than hanging out with thin people, and planning one's diet carefully will have a bigger influence than hanging out with fat people -- but that's not to say that this isn't a legitimate influence, and well worth knowing about.
You're describing about 8 hours of walking on a daily basis, above and beyond your normal school day and any other activities you might have had. That seems really unlikely.
First, walking at a leisurely pace is not the same as working out strenuously.
Second, unless you stalked her while you were dating, you have no way of knowing how many Twinkies she scarfed down while you were not looking.
Third, unless you stalked her before you were dating, you have no way of knowing whether or not she was eating less and exercising more than normal. Just because someone has a slow metabolism and it takes more exercise for them to maintain a healthy weight than other people does not mean they can't lose weight. It means their body needs more exercise or less food than other people.
Fourth, you lost all credibility with your second sentence anyways.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The BMI scale is fundamentally flawed--so much so that it's nearly useless. For example, I transitioned from the high range of healthy weight into solidly overweight one year because I started going to the gym regularly--no meaningful amount of fat was added during that time.
You Slashdotted YouTube.
Yeah man, now we know who the big dogs are now. Yep.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Obesity is a condition based on the terrible BMI chart, which was NEVER meant to be used the way it is today. It's more of a vague approximation.
What Obesity really is is a symptom. Obesity is NOT the cause of all those health problems that doctors try to blame on it (which is just about everything these days). The only thing that Obesity would cause is join pain in the knees and other things like that that actually make sense. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems...they're all from poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and genetics, NOT from being "overweight."
It's perfectly possible to be "overweight" or even "obese" (according to the all-knowing BMI) and be perfectly healthy. The diet industry would just like you to think otherwise, and spend your life unhappy, looking for an answer to this "problem" that they've convinced society is the worst thing possible
What percentages of diets fail? Now remember, failing means either giving up, or putting on at least 80% of what was lost?
Try 95%. And often, failed diets result in MORE weight put back on. Your body senses the diet as a lack of food, and over a period of yo-yo dieting DECREASES your metabolism. Yo-yo dieting is definitely more harmful than if you stayed at the same weight.
Just eat healthier, get some exercise, and learn to love your body, no matter how it looks. It's not about inches or pounds, it's about the crap INSIDE your body working the way it should.
If your calorific intake is really that low, and output is that high, you may just be that 1% or whatever minority it is that actually has a medical cause for their body fat level. In that case, your individual case is obviously not included in the "it's probably just that you're lazy and eat too much" category. However, for every one person like you, there are 20 or 30 who think "yes, yes that's it, I have a defective ventromedial hyperthalamus", sit back on their wide ass, and open another coke and a packet of chips.
Another example is one of my gf's friends. She looks from a distance like any other fat chick, but in fact she's just built like a brick shithouse. She's extremely active and it's all muscle, she just can't 'slim down' due to genetics. Sometimes them's just the breaks. But again, most of the time, people are fat simply because they choose not to fix it.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I tried lots of things, but what worked for me was...
STOPPING EATING!
>>They're not claiming that fat rubs off from one person onto another. you are right, it's the slashdot article title that claims that.
-Yourmomisfasterthanabeowulfcluster
I thought fat friends made you look thin?
Unless these researchers formulated a set of axioms and proceeded to derive their conclusions from said axioms using the rules of logic, then this study doesn't amount to proof of anything. I really wish people would stop abusing the word "proof".
If all your friends eat greasy burgers and pizza and have beer and then plop down to watch the game, you are likely to do the same to fit in.
Like people have not been doing that for the last sixty years. You can't tell me that all of the sudden 75% of the country is doing this and that is responsible for the fat epidemic that's happened since the 1980's. Something's changed and it's not football.
The most likely culprit are changes to food allowed by the Nixon administration, which include allowing high fructose corn syrup. Compare these two graphs side by side:
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... "I'm not fat. I'm big boned!"
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
choose to keep that metabolism up then.
But you can too because they apparently put it on the Internet free0
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/37
New England Journal of Medicine
The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D.
357:370-379 July 26, 2007
Slashdotters will no doubt be interested in the Kamada-Kawai algorithm in Pajek software which is used to generate the social network images like this one http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370 /F1 Networks are where it's at today.
They had 12,000 subjects (from the Framingham Heart Study) who had filled out detailed questionnaires, including the names of people (often also in the study) whom they regarded as friends. They compared friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors.
There were 3 kinds of friends: (1) I consider you my friend, and vice versa (2) I consider you my friend, but you don't consider me your friend (3) You consider me your friend, but I don't consider you my friend.
The strongest influence was on mutual friends. In case (2), if you were fat, you would influence me, but not vice versa.
They tried to prove that it was a causal effect, and not just an association, by watching to see what happens over time. If friend A gets fat, friend B gets fat a year later.
Mutual friends had the strongest influence. Women friends had a stronger influence than male friends.
Opposite-sex friends had no effect on each other.
Siblings had an effect on each other. But same-sex siblings had the strongest effect, and opposite-sex siblings had the least effect (almost none).
Spouses had a slightly weaker effect. (Which is surprising if you expect them to eat the same food.)
Neighbors had no effect on each other. So it has nothing to do with the driving distance to Macdonalds.
You could run that social networking analysis program on Slashdot.
For some reason, someone thought that "-1 Offtopic" really meant "-1 I didn't get the joke."
Bad puns gave me bad karma. =(
I was born a skinny white kid (apologies to Steve Martin). I grew up to be a skinny guy. As a teenager I watched my dad go from being a skinny guy to a fat guy. I thought to myself "Why doesn't he do something about that???". As time went on he stayed fat, and I stayed skinny (with no effort whatsoever). Then when I got to be about 35, I started gaining weight. I started eating less and avoiding fast-food. Tried diet after diet after diet. Read one worthless book after another. Over the course of ten years I went from 180 to 308, eating less and less all the time and trying every exercise and supplement ever hyped by greedy snake-oil salesmen.
What I have learned from growing fat helps me to understand those of you who claim fatness is a choice. You see I could be offended, or lash back with great anger at your ignorance. Instead, growing fat has taught me a great many things about humanity. Chief among them is that, just as I did not choose to be fat, you did not choose to be stupid.
...that girls tend to have a 'friend' with them that's a little less good looking? I mean, it's not that uncommon if a group of girls are going out that they'll have a friend that's fatter/uglier than the rest of them, thus making them look better, relatively. I guess the same goes for guys as well. If I'm going out with a bunch of friends and trying to hook up with a girl, I don't want to be in the same group as Brad Pitt, I want to have my friend be less good looking than me, so I'm their target, not him.
Time.com top story: Obese survive heart attacks better... Eat it and weep, skinny bones...
4 1555,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics&iref=werecommend
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,16
drug addicts friends are also addicts
jocks hang out with other jocks
musicians hang out with other musicians
computer nerds kick it with other computer nerds
sales people hang out with other sales people
and fat people hang out with other fat people!
I think this is more how it is...
not always, but alot of the time.
I have had some pretty big fat frieds from time to time over the years.
I never put on weight by hanging out with them...
You do not have blow money and time at the gym to get in some semblance of shape.
Buy a chin-up bar. Do as many reps as you can, two sets a day, for a year. Ease up if you feel like you are hurting something.
It takes less than 5 minutes a day, and you will look damn good (relatively speaking).
Cardio is tougher, and takes a lot longer. If it was me, and having more sex with your wife is not an option, then I'd park a treadmill/bike next to the TV and use it. But I haven't actually tried that.
Beer does not make you fat, although the results of these sorts of studies tend to change every couple of years. Of course, if you do go out drinking, you probably eat a few packets of chips and a kebab or two, but drinking low carb beer isn't really going to change that (and it tastes like shit).
According to research, drinking is not associated with weight gain.
I really don't have any "fat friends" per say, but I know that personally it's not what I eat that put me overweight, but all the soda and beer that I drank. I only eat like one good meal a day, and it's not fast food. After I stopped drinking all the damn soda and beer, I dropped back to a normal weight. Worked for me.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
Your body can only reduce the metabolism by about 20% (and it rarely ever gets to that point, generally only beneath 10% body fat), but there are post-diet refeeding effects as your bastard hypothalamus likes to maintain a body weight set point (which is actually composed of dynamic factors and isn't fixed, but it's too complex to get into here)
The most difficult thing is always, always the psychological factors. Starvation dieting with minimal protein intake and fruits/veggies etc to maintain lean body mass is actually incredibly effective. However, the adherence rate is quite low. Your brain only has so much self-control, and using self-control in one thing has been shown to diminish it in others in studies, thus making some behavior more impulsive/avoidant, which can certainly cause problems with diet and exercise.
Physiologically though? It can be quite effective. Psychologically, probably quite difficult unless you're railing a lot of coke.
One thing I have learned is that the physiology of weight loss is almost irrelevant; it is all about the psychology. Transforming like of bad food to not like, transforming not like of good food to like, transforming not like of physical exertion to like, transforming like of sedentary activity to not like. But at every turn, the brain itself resists change and makes this a very difficult struggle.
As the saying in KOTOR went, "passion gives me strength." I think passion for what you want, and passion for every step along that path is key, because if you hate it and just want to continue doing what you've always done, you will is going to fail and you won't be able to do it consistently.
But actually creating genuine passion for something you don't like, and diminishing that for what you do like, now that's a bitch.
I dunno, I'm considered fat and I have plenty of skinny friends. I'm plenty active too.
I come in at around 325 or so at only 6 foot 3 inches tall, I gained about 70 lbs after a back injury a few years ago and haven't been able to shake it (both the weight and the back pain) but I was still considered fat back then at 250-260lbs.
This idea that all fat people are lazy is something that I don't get. Sure, some are, some aren't. I don't think there is a rule of thumb on it from my experience. I'm more active then some of the skinny people I know and just as active as others.
Of course I have fat friends too, I don't think there is any conspiracy to look thin or hide it, we all joke about our size and don't really care much about it. I definitely don't care what other people think. We don't really see anything wrong with our size other then people tell us it is unhealthy but I watch them getting sick all the time when I don't. SO I'm wondering about that too. I haven't had anyone with the balls to say anything about my weight to my face in over 15 years and he wished he never did after that. Sure he was quicker and got 4 punches to my one in, but I only had to hit him once and he was done. Kicking him for 5 minutes afterwards was just to relieve some aggravation. It helps that I can bench press more then my weight and do 20 military style push ups with a 120lbs girl sitting on my back.
I don't think you can lump everyone into the same categories and make blanket claims. When you do, you will find your vastly under informed. What you say may be true, but not in my experience. So at best, it is only true in a limited means. And yes, my BMI is high enough to consider me as obese.
I hate this sort of BS too.
I walk around hungry constantly. Seriously 20 minutes after a big meal I'm famished again and stay that way till I eat next. That can't be "normal". I've got a lot more self control than some of the people I see around me and I can only assume that if they were constantly hungry they'd do worse than me. Also I don't get to choose not to eat, the way say an alocholic with cravings might choose to give up alcohol.
Also I have a couple of medical conditions that aren't helping. (An ankle that's going to need to be fused is a big hindrance to excercise. I use to get off the train a station early and walk the rest of the way to work. If I try that these days I'm in agony). I've lost weight twice in my life and each time required extreme diets (we're talking salad and lean meat/chicken only) and 2hrs/day excercise. I could do that in my teens but now I'm at work 12 hours a day 5 days a week, and have other responsibilities.
So yeah I'm overweight. I don't feel the need to apologise for it or for a drain on health resources (which I pay for dearly). I don't feel the need to join the guilt culture that promotes crash dieting competitions as healthy and tries to sell voodoo dieting products for a huge profit. I alternate between anger and disgust at people who think eating is just a case of being glutonous.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is why fitness experts who are not using science from 30 years ago recommend high intensity interval training for burning fat. Walking just doesn't cut it.
Also, the idea is not to simply EAT LESS. In fact, the vast majority of people do not eat often enough to have maximal fat loss. Let me repeat that, they do not eat OFTEN ENOUGH. In order to keep your body happy you should eat every 2-3 hours while awake. Otherwise your blood sugar drops and your insulin levels go out of wack, and you begin to secrete cortisol, and other harmful hormones that will make you fatter.
No one is making excuses. They're making observations.
The study, or at least the media reporting of it is implying causality and a risk of gaining weight if you hang around certain people.
There's also the case of overweight people helping each other lose weight (though loses like that tend to be temporary because no matter how much people try to deny it people do have pre-dispositions when it comes to weight).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Fat people should be killed and eaten by thin people. They take up too much space. And they smell bad. Also, I am worried about super models. They are too thin and too pretty. People who are too thin and too pretty should be killed and eaten by regular looking thin people. Ugly people should also be killed. And eaten. I envisage a world of OK looking thin cannibals. Cannibals are my new peer group.
Now wash your hands.
My understanding was that in group dining situations, people tend to adjust their eating
to that of others. Any coworkers one happens to befriend are also likely to have similar
habits and therefore suffer similar side-effects of lifestyle.
But hey, what's a little sensationalist title recasting among friends.
fvcking editorf
Were that I say, pancakes?
...now my penis is 12" long, I swear!
Headlines like this are awful. The study proves no such thing. It only shows that there is a correlation, which is FAR from being proof of cause. If the study "prooves having fat friends makes you fat," then everyone would be fat.
This is why laypeople shouldn't be allowed to reword science.
Do these friends make me look fat?
I'm married & I've got a gym just 5 minutes walking distance from work. Going in the lunch break is a win win situation - better health, and feeling fresh when back for the second part of the work day. I used to be a complete fitness freak before I met my wife; sadly things have gone downhill a bit since then (as far as my condition goes), however now in the mid thirties am seeing the value of getting back in shape.
(Oh and re beer, in the choice between low carb and full carb, with taste otherwise being equal, that's a pretty easy one. Opinion is divided but I happen to low the Pure Blondes.)
ISO certified == THX certified
If your calorific intake is really that low, and output is that high, you may just be that 1% or whatever minority it is
Ooh, let me end this sentence: "that is able to defy thermodynamics."
If calories in are less than calories out, you'll lose fat. It's physically impossible not to. Any discussion of weight control has to start with this simple fact.
High fructose corn syrup is definetly part of the problem. But of course, so are portions. "Do you want to make it a mega-lard-ass size for 15 cents more?" A portion of McDonalds fries (regular size) was 230 kCals in the 60s, now its over 400. A chipolte buritto is about 2/3s of the energy a health 20-40 year-old male needs in a day (granted he is the typical office worker who gets 20-30 minutes of excersize 4 times per week).
EVERYWHERE foods potions have gotten larger. Few people realize that A.) It takes 10-15 minutes to feel full. B.) Thirst is often mistaken for hunger C.) What tastes awesome (like McDonalds, candy, steak, etc) isn't an acceptable meal choice. Eat a pack of star-bursts over 2-3 days, not 10 minutes.
Basically, people are either too ignorant, apathetic, or lazy to make good nutrition choices. You really shouldn't even give little kids that much juice, becauses its nutritional content (high simple carbs) is similar to soda-pop.
BTW, all this came from the M.S. nutrition teacher I had last semester.
I RTFA, but I can't find the "there is a direct, causal relationship" quote anywhere. Did the researcher actually say that??? It doesn't sound like something a good researcher would say, especially considering the prestige of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Skipping meals is a surefire way to foul up your metabolism. Contrary to what others have said, the exercise was good. Not as good as interval training, but walking is good cardio. However, eating on an inconsistent schedule, not eating enough, or eating the wrong foods will cause weight gain. And the combination often leads to binging.
I used to skip breakfast and lunch and wonder why I was 300 pounds. I stopped drinking soda, started eating healthy meals every three hours, and started consistently exercising and the weight just melted off.
Out of curiosity, how do you reconcile that belief with the studies which show only marginal differences in high fructose corn syrup consumption? I'll agree it looks good as a theory, and I was actually placing bets on it as well. None of the studies really seem to be panning out though.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Playing violent video games makes you violent
Eating fish makes you love anime.
Lack of pirates is the cause of global warming
etc
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Transforming like of bad food to not like, transforming not like of good food to like, transforming not like of physical exertion to like, transforming like of sedentary activity to not like. But at every turn, the brain itself resists change and makes this a very difficult struggle.
Strongly agreed on that. I decided to finally get myself in shape about...four years back now I think. Trying to set up conditioning for myself was one of the single most important parts. The bad food still tasted awesome but I stopped having a desire for it once I managed to feel disgust for eating it to a point where just looking at it would trigger those feelings.
Everything will be taken away from you.
You're fat. And don't try to sugar coat it either, or you'll probably just eat that too.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Wow, violence really does solve everything! Maybe I should get fat too, then I'll really see the light about how I'm living life completely ass-backwards!
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/in venting_the_lobotomy.php
.. something seems different .. can't quite put my finger on it ..
You can't ever prove causation--it's an inference. It isn't written in really small words on viruses and bacteria that they cause disease, but from the high correlation between their presence and disease, we infer that they are the causative agent. We are aware than not all correlation involves causation--thanks for pointing out the obvious--but the task of thinking people is to figure out the cases in which causation can reliably be inferred.
Exercise and diet always cut it, unless your girlfriend was a perpetual motion machine. According to this chart, walking at 3.0 mph for a 190-pound person burns 300 calories per hour. Four 6.2 mile trips at 3.0 mph is 8.3 hours of walking, or 2,500 calories. She might have been an unusually efficient walker, but there are limits, and she did other things in the day. If what you said was true (and I doubt it...eight hours of walking? really?), she ate more than 2,000 calories a day. You may not have seen her do it, but she somehow managed to cram in a lot of eating in the time between school, sex, eight hours of walking, homework, and sleeping.
An AC said further:
No. In fact, it's not merely implausible, but actually impossible. Your belief system is thermodynamically unsound.
I wasn't going to go that far, because the amount of physical work that even a very active person does is trivial compared to the amount of calories in even a very constricted diet. Take, for example, a packet of Indo Mie Migoreng, an affordable and tasty snack. (Cmon Indo Mie, where's my shill cheque?! At least send me some, my box of 'em is nearly empty... ;) This contains 1620kJ of energy, a similar figure, if my memory serves, to the amount in four Arnott's Mint Slice biscuits.
In terms of physical work required to work off one packet of noodles, given that I weigh 85kg, I'd have to make a vertical climb of two kilometers (85kg * 9.18ms^-2 = 833N, 1640kJ = 0.833kN * 1968m). That's the equivalent of climbing the tallest mountain on the Australian mainland. For four bikkies. Obviously we're nowhere near 100% efficient in converting chemical to mechanical energy, actually the figure is closer to 25% (Study here, see page 18). That's still a 500m vertical climb, the equivalent of climbing the Taipei 101. Twice.
Most energy expenditure, and hence weight loss, comes from resting metabolism, because it's ticking over all the time. Base adult metabolism ticks over at around 90 watts. That's 324kJ an hour, every hour, regardless of what you're doing. Raising this number (by having a higher muscle mass, or by having other maintenance work carried out, as happens after a workout when the torn muscles are healing) will raise your overall energy expenditure far more than any actual exercise you do.
But I digress. If the overall number of calories leaving a system (the body) is greater than the calories going in, then as you said, either that person is losing weight, or I'm going to patent them and be rich. RICH I TELL YOU!.
Random further reading with a scientific-sounding name: Thermodynamics of weight loss diets
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
This is not to say that anyone else is to blame because we're surrounded by convenient and bad-for-you food, but eating healthy requires you to think ahead. Salads aren't filling, sorry. Rabbit food sucks. But as long as I remember to stock tuna and other low-cal stuff, I'm okay. The healthiest people I know cook their own food the night before and bring it in in cute little containers, along with snacks to munch on throughout the day. Being a person who doesn't think of food until I'm hungry, it's hard to plan that far ahead. Wendy's is definitely more convenient. It's actually easier for me to skip the meal than to plan ahead and bring something healthy.
Taking the all you can eat buffet as a challenge made you fat, not your friends...
I'd guess you were joking, but hanging out with dumb people makes you dumb. The jokes you share, the vocabulary you use, the activities you participate in, are all shared with your friends. If you're smart but hang out with dumb people, your intellect will get less exercise because you will dumb down your conversation. You will use simpler, less nuanced arguments--you may just be left with slogans and ad hominem attacks to make your point. You'll rely more on TV to inform you, and less on reading, which is a cerebral, more solitary experience. The company you keep is normative, like it or not. Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, and you will become smarter. This doesn't mean you'll discover cold fusion, but the idea is still sound.
HFCS is not the problem. The problem is simple, too many calories in, too few calories out.
E C2002/frvol25i3a.pdf
HFCS is no worse for you than sucrose, and because it is sweeter than cane sugar per calorie, it may even be better.
The real answer is that calorie consumption has increase over 20 percent since 1980, and physical activity has probably decreased during the same period.
Check the graph on page 3:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/FoodReview/D
People always like to place blame on external target rather than looking at the real problem, that people eat too much. It's easy to blame HFCS (though its no worse than sugar) or fatty foods (though many countries eat much more fat than we do yet don't get fat). Much harder to look at the situation honestly and say that we are a bunch of lazy gluttons.
'It's all the fault of Nixon and that damned HFCS!' Is a great feelgood answer that doesn't hurt anyones feelings, but it simply isn't the truth.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
And only FUD.
I'd be a big as a tent if that were true!
Whats the obsession with other peoples weight anyhow?
It's none of your business what others weigh.
It doesn't affect your daily life, so what gives?
All I see is a bunch of elitist assholes putting others down for no good reason.
I agree that there are some for whom the genetic component is too strong. I run 3-4 times a week and can run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes. I work with a guy who runs once every few months and can run the same distance in about 9.5 minutes. He's also much thinner than me, though he eats two Whopper cheesburgers at a sitting. Genetics do play a role. But if I were 40 pounds heavier (which I have been) and sedentary, eating at McDonalds every day would undermine any attempts to blame it on genetics. Our own actions do have an influence on our lives.
Parent is informative.
No, parent is anecdotal.
People like to down on fatties all day for being lazy. How many of them actually work for the body they have?
I can pretty much guarantee that the answer is "all of them" - or at least almost all. It may not be as hard work and they may actually enjoy it, but you don't become fit by sitting still.
Now you're right that not everyone is the same and some people really do have problems with weight control. The vast majority of people do not and if they are a "fattie" then it is, without a doubt, because they are lazy.
If it's hard for you, you have to suck it up and deal with it because it won't just go away.
Bingo. Refusing to do so (becoming a fattie) is laziness.
None of which contradicts the basic observation of the study - that there's a correlation between hanging around fat people and getting fat. The simplest explanation for that is friends make similar choices to one other (similar thinking can either be the cause of, or a consequence of, a relationship with someone). It doesn't let them off the hook for their own bad choices, it just identifies a key influence.
In short, the scientists aren't saying that if all your friends jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, you should too. They're saying they watched a bunch of friends of bridge-jumpers jump themselves. No one is arguing these people don't have control over their own lives; they're only observing what's happened.
I was going to try to be all like scholarly in replying to this, since it was apparently 30 years they wasted on this "academic" study. But, in a nutshell, this study is fucking stupid.
The results of it are correct. If you have fat friends, you are more likely to become fat.
Of course, if you have friends who are into sci-fi, you're more likely to watch/read sci-fi. If you have friends who ride bikes, you're more likely to ride bikes. You're more likely to do everything your friends do. They are, after all, your friends for a reason: you share similar procilivities, you do things together, word of mouth passes between you faster than it does between others, etc. People always conform a bit to their peer groups, whether they want to or not.
And the bit about people were less likely to get fat if their family was fat, and even less likely if their neighbors were fat. Gee, what a surprise, since people are closest to their friends, next closest to their family, and not as close to their neighbors.
My lord...what fantastically colossal waste of time. I hope not very much money was spent on this "study".
gameDB
I still don't buy it. Maybe it's a cultural thing that only works like that in America and not here, or maybe I just live in some weird statistical-fluke place, but I just don't see that kind of thing happening around me. I've been in mixed fat/skinny/average groups for as long as I remember, and I haven't yet seen anyone going obese just because someone else in the group was obese. In the current group, for example, two people just joined the gym this year, instead of taking a hint from the round guys.
So peer reviewed or not, excuse me if I find that a bit hard to believe.
Additionally, I just don't like that kind of "Having Fat Friends Makes You Fat" wording. It makes it sound like some inescapable cause->effect relationship, like gravity or newtonian mechanics, when at best it can be some statistical maybe-or-maybe-not thing. Hanging around fat people _might_ make you more inclined to feel it's ok to be fat, or it might do nothing whatsoever, or it might even cause a "geesh, I don't want to end up looking like _this_ guy" reaction. Even _if_ on the whole it ends up favouring the first (I'm still not convinced, but let's assume that anyway), it's an overall influence, not some inescapable fate.
Basically the whole sounds like a rehash of the old judging someone by the company they keep prejudice, which is nothing more than a society's way to enforcing unofficial ostracisms. Basically, "stay away from the guys we don't like, or we'll start avoiding you too." And the problem with that is that, as the quote goes, "A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." The more such prejudices are enforced, the more essentially any kind of having one's own opinion dies.
And peer reviewed or not, I'm automatically suspicious of any research that just "happens" to neatly confirm a prejudice. There has been entirely too much money and time dumped into pseudo-science whose only merit was "confirming" prejudices, and "peer review" occasionally means jack squat when the peers are similarly biased. The English used to build a whole pseudo-science to "prove" that the Irish are too innately retarded to be human, the white supremacists did the same for anyone who isn't caucasian, etc. Ok, this one is more subtle than that, but at the same time more perverse for it.
_Especially_ when it ends up worded like a blanket generalization that applies universally and inescapably to everyone, when reality tends to be more of a statistics and gauss curves thing.
So I don't know if this is bad science or the guy actually has a point, but the potential for skewing research just to confirm a personal bias is there. And if it is impartial research, it sure ends up giving all the wrong signals there.
And since everyone seems to have taken the "but it's peer-reviewed!" appeal to authority as a battle cry once again: none of the above mentioned prejudice-confirming pseudo-science was thrown out the window by similar-minded peers at the time, btw. Science isn't always infallible, sometimes it just takes some time to correct itself. In fact, the whole scientific process is about trying to correct itself, and that starts with keeping an open mind that something might not be entirely correct even if it's peer-reviewed. Alchemy was very peer-reviewed, for example, and so was the raisin pie atom model. Doesn't mean they didn't turn up to be all wrong.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's not quite so simple as you make it out to be.
I'd love to. Unfortunately, there's this stupid rule that only congress can impeach him, and you have to be 30 to run for congress (not to mention the unofficial rules of being rich, completely devoid of conscience, and probably a lawyer (redundancy in those last two noted)... Annoying, that.
But what has really convinced me was the weight loss that some of my friends experienced from eliminating HFCS from their diets. I've made the same dietary a couple of months ago. I now buy the somewhat more expensive Coke made in Mexico that Costco and I find other alternatives to products that use HFCS (it's somewhat disturbing how many products use it). In 2 months, I've lost 15 pounds so far. I don't exercise any more than I did before and I still eat a ton of fatty foods.
ADM can continue to fund bogus studies that show that HFCS isn't any worse for you than cane sugar, but I'm never going back. I'm feel healthier and have more energy since I've changed my diet. I have yet to meet anyone who's given up HFCS who doesn't see similar results.
Obviously you don't go from KFC-once-an-hour and lift-a-beer-can workouts to ultramarathon running overnight. I'll give you a slightly elaborated formula: Eat slightly less than you did yesterday. Exerise slightly more. Keep it up until you're at a healthy weight. Capiche?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Apart from a few rare medical conditions, obesity comes from eating too much without getting enough exercise. I'm at a normal weight level because I don't eat whatever comes in my way, still I never go hungry.
To my overweight friends who complain about how difficult it is to lose weight I say: Replace one or both of your two hot meals a day with bread or something healthy. Drop the pack of crisps every night. If that doesn't help, start jogging.
You'll get no sympathy from me whatsoever for your weight problem, it's very fixable.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
You would have to have the mental capacity to understand what and why the violence was there. I doubt it would solve anything for you.
I believe I stated that he got 4 punches in to my one and it only took one from me. Any normal person would read that to mean I was defending myself. I explained that kicking him while he was down was because of something else that flew into the moment.
I suppose you do have life completely backwards. Especially with a comment like that. What should have I done? Explained that violence doesn't solve anything in between taking punches? Maybe sit down and reason with him in between blows and explain that if only we could talk I could make things different for him? Maybe we should do that with wars and stuff too. In between people getting killed, we offer to bow down to their every demand to stop the violence. Then I guess we will sit back and enjoy out new overlords while waiting for the next person to use violence to make us do something they want. OH wait, some places have tried that and it only invited more violence. Maybe we shouldn't take any of your advice.
I can see why you posted AC.
The trick is not to adjust energy intake, but instead adjust the feeling of hunger. Energy intake will reliably follow, assuming you eat real food of course, not lardburgers.
The question is, then: what effects do different sugars have?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
After hearing about the report on AM radio from a couple of different channels, it seems to work both ways - both overweight and thin friends can influence your weight. The results were fairly even between 'overweight' and 'thin' friend groups.
Supposedly, the increase of your chances of gaining or losing weight according to the weight of your friends is approximately 30-50%, depending on your relation with them.
It's also interesting to note that there are '3 degrees of separation', where your friend's friends and even their family can also influence your weight... This even includes long-distance relationships with people, which the study claims to suggest that this is may be a result of similar 'ideas' than directly tied to adoption of eating habits.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
but I ain't down with that!
(it's worth the karma hit damnit)
"The study's records included each participant's address and the names of family members. In order for the researchers to be sure they did not lose track of their subjects, each was asked to name a close friend who would know where they were at the time of their next exam, in roughly four years."
Is this cause or effect?
I say "BS".
Possible. I could be "lazy" for not wanting to devote a few hours a week to exercise. On the other hand, I just might have something better to do. I'd rather be fat, wealthy, well-read, and well-informed than skinny, poor and dumb.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
It's not HFCS that doesn't trigger the pancreas to release insulin, it is fructose.
:P). I don't care about the corn industry or HFCS at all, just hate all the alarmism over HFCS just because people can't admit it's their fault and take responsibility for their actions.
The amount of extra fructose in HFCS as opposed to sucrose is almost inconsequential, especially if the extra sweetness in HFCS leads to less being used.
As for your anecdotal evidence, is it not possible that by avoiding HFCS causes people to consume less calories because when you would've grabbed a coke or a snack before, now you can't because it has HFCS in it?
BTW I'm all for getting rid of corn subsidies as well as the sugar import quotas, which were originally put in place to protect the sugar industry (Isn't that ironic.
HFCS is not the reason people are fat, it's not even one of the major contributing reasons, I doubt it's even a minor contributing reason.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Excuses excuses.
Two things have changed, gradually over the last 50 years. First, people take in more calories. Second, people move less, mainly as a consequence of the proportion of workers doing physical labourt declining steeply.
It's that simple. You eat more than your body needs, you gain weigth.
Running is a very bad method for _losing_ weight. Let me explain:
The strain on your joints when running is rather large. When running, your legs (and especially your knees!) have to take the full load. If your technique is just slightly imperfect (twisting the knee only slightly out of the optimal position), running when overweight is almost guaranteed to literally crush your knees.
Losing weight _and_ losing your knees is not that healthy.
The only way to really reduce this strain is reducing yor body weight -> that is, go swimming. At least till you've reached a 'normal' weight, then you can start running/doing whatever you like. Biking is an alternative, but is a very limited exercise when seen from a muscular perspective - it only trains your legs, it won't e.g. help you grow the back muscles that are really important in our modern (that is, cubicle) lifestyle.
And 6 Days per week, about 2 hours? That's a tad much for simple 'exercise'.
As an example, I'm rather deep into competitive dancing (latin - the stresses/demands on your body are almost the same as martial arts), and we're training 5 days a week, 2-3 hours, and I've got severe problems just sustaining my weight (about 69kg/150 lbs, 1.8 meters).
What most coaches/physicians/physiotherapists/... here in Germany recommend as 'healthy exercise' is about 2 times a week, 2 hours. That is easily enough to build up some muscle while being safe from possible overstrain.
[What? Hand in my tinfoil hat? Hey, I'm writing FORTRAN in Vim for the rest of my time!]
For a European, it's pretty much impossible to eat a regular sized meal in a US restaurant... unless you fasted for a few days beforehand. Typically most people order one meal for two or just have appetizers.
Watching people eat over there is quite an experience... o_o
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I went back to the States after a long spell in Europe and thought that I would really like to have some Mexican food
The assortment menu entry looked good (taco, burrito, etc). Somehow I thought there would be only one of each, or maybe very small examples.
A large platter arrived that would easily feed two people. Not all the items listed on the menu were on it, but there was plenty of food so I didn't care.
A few minutes later another large platter arrived with the rest of the food. The combined platters would feed five people easily. (I didn't finish it all. I love Mexican food and I tried, but it was too much.)
Are you daft?
:)
It's not HFCS that doesn't trigger the pancreas to release insulin, it is fructose.
And pray tell, what does HFCS mean? Might it perhaps be High Fructose Corn Syrup? As in Corn Syrup which has been treated so it contains High levels of Fructose? Sheesh. (Btw, nice triple negative there
The amount of extra fructose in HFCS as opposed to sucrose is almost inconsequential, especially if the extra sweetness in HFCS leads to less being used.
Urm, yup, you are daft. There is *no* sucrose in HFCS, HFCS contains a mix of fructose and glucose. HFCS is actually used as an *alernative* for sucrose.
In your Finland example, if your hypothesis were that eating ice-cream caused drowning, you would take a random sample of people who ate ice-cream, randomise every significant factor (time of year, time of day, weather, location etc.) and then you have to show that with a statistical certainty of >0.95 (or so) that eating ice-cream is a factor that divides your samples into the two groups of those who die and those who don't die. For this particular hypothesis you're very likely to reject your alternative hypothesis at this point.
"It's quite plausible that there are people whose body needs 20 hours a day of constant sprinting and one stick of celery a week to maintain a healthy weight."
That isn't plausible at all.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
...if you put a fat friend and a skinny friend in a room together, will the skinny one get fat, or will the fat one get skinny?
Yeah well, if you really are that stupid you probably deserve everything you get.
I once read a list of 10 such factors but I only remeber two of them.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
It IS as simple as too many calories in, too few calories out. The WHY is not as simple.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
7 KM/h is just over 4 mph. Most peoples walking pace is around 3 and a half mph so I wouldn't say 7KM/h is exactly running, more a slow jog. Maybe you meant mph though ?
for one welcome our fat overlords
I think this study proves that being fat isn't just hazardous to yourself. I want a round of bans on public obesity. You shouldn't be allowed to be fat in bars, bowling alleys, or restaurants either. Being fat in public puts everyone at risk. We should start researching the detrimental effects of secondhand obesity. Next time I walk by someone eating junk feed I'm going to lecture him on what he's doing to my health and why he doesn't have the right to put me at risk too.
Um, what is lame about it? If you're around fat friends, they are probably eating lots of pizza, beer, nachos and in large quantities. They are also likely sitting on the couch. Hang around them, and you'll likely eat the same things, and have the same inactivity. Thus you will gain weight.
Its the same with fat families; its not a gene that's causing them to be fat, its the family's crappy eating and exercise habits. One only need watch things like "We're killing the kids" or Biggest loser family edition to see this.
Don't blame school meals when the kids are learning bad eating habits at home. No one is forcing them to buy seconds, snacks and soda. They learn to eat like that at home.
Its not oversimplfying at all. I worked with a trainer to lose 30lbs in 8 weeks. She told me to burn more calories the only things i can do are reduce consumption and increase expendature. In other words, take in less calories and use more.
Your metabolism plays a part as well; she had me add two snacks a day between meals, and lessen the calories in my normal meals.
Here's what she said when I asked "what if i still feel hunger." She said "you're on a diet, you're going to feel a little hunger. Deal with it, but don't cave into it."
Wrong advise, bread is the worse thing to use to replace anything. Too many carbs. You need protein to make you feel full. Tell your friends to reduce portions and have a snack of say an apple + 1 tbsp. of peanut butter. Oh and you're right, exercise.
I own a business in a developing country. My employees work from 7am to 5pm (AT THE LEAST!) with half hour break (AT THE MOST!). There is a group of employees whose job basically move materials. The materials usually weights from an average of 1 kg (0.45lbs) to 50 kg (110lbs). Every day each will carry an average of 15,000 kgs (33,000 lbs) over a distance of around 10 meters (30 fts?). Longer work hours for a particular day means more materials to move. About half of the materials must be pulled from the ground to each of their shoulders.
In spite of all that heavy work and all the resulting six packs my employees have, there are still fat guys in this group. Not obese, but still fat. So sometimes workouts won't do anything..
If you delay pleasure infinitely, the pleasure will be infinite. (YM)
http://www.glycemicindex.com
What is the Glycemic Index?
Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave quite differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Choosing low GI carbs - the ones that produce only small fluctuations in our blood glucose and insulin levels - is the secret to long-term health reducing your risk of heart disease and diabetes and is the key to sustainable weight loss.
In other words - it's not just counting calories. Some calories are actually worse for you. Sucrose is better for you than fructose, for example.
So if you can become fat by hanging around people that are fat, then shouldn't some fat ass lose a bunch of pounds hanging out with thin people? If the answer is no then this whole theory is crap. You could take it further too. If a guy hangs out with all girls, would he turn into a girl? I mean I hang out with several large people and i am a slim 140, where as my buddy is like 500.
Today's Tomorrow is Yesterday's Future! --- "Where Ever You Go, There You Are" -- Diablo 1
YOu posted that whole thing, but didn't realize that there isn't a single bit of useful fact in there at all.
The glycemic index is another BS gimmick that losers like you trot out to pretend you're fat because of some reason other than your own slovenly behavior.
You're wrong, fat and stupid. Why do those things always seem to correlate so closely, like with you?
> The whole thing will probably unfold much like a zombie film, only in slow motion and with more labored breathing
What a great idea for a video game! We can call it FAT DOOM! I wonder if Carmack would be willing...
Here's a suggestion... maybe it's because some of them drink! (ding ding ding)
I suspect you might have been omitting something from your diet, and/or you lost weight too quickly. I lost a little less than a pound a week, and I always felt great. Of course, my main method for losing weight was increased exercise and not calorie reduction, although I did reduce my calories slightly as I found I was actually slightly less hungry. Perhaps I was becoming more in tune with my body, I don't know. Anyways, I never intended to get down below 180 (I was originally about 225), as I hadn't been less than 200 since my last year of high school. (For reference, I'm a little over 6'2". If you're close to that height, above or below, you probably realize how easy it is to hide 40-50 pounds.) I've gained a little weight back and currently weight 185. Over the last several years, my weight has tended to fluctuate between 175 and 190, depending on whether I'm training for a marathon or not.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Yea no crap...
/ weightloss.sorrells/index.html?iref=newssearch
Don't want to be fat? Put the fork down.
Make your portion sizes smaller, you don't need to eat like you're 14 any more. As soon as your hunger pang is gone, put the damn fork down. Don't finish your plate. Give the rest to the dog (who will _really_ appreciate it).
Get an apple instead of a Twix bar. Go to safeway and get a roast chicken instead of stopping for a big mac. Drink Perrier instead of coca cola classic (or the chemical laden diet version).
It's really really simple. Eat good food and only eat enough to make you not hungry.
These simple steps helped this couple lose 580 pounds and now they are normal:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/07/23
Better than Jenny Craig, dangerous amphetamines, hypnosis or any other treatment.
Put the fork down, seriously.
It will help you live longer. The sooner you stop making excuses the sooner that weight will drop.
-AC
Wow. When Chertoff said he had a gut feeling, I didn't know I was going to gain 150 pounds!
I have a feeling that the blame game will start in full effect instead of identifying the real issues. Americans are becoming more seditary. Yes, there are those that exercize - but hey the latest 'reality' show is on and break out the pork rinds.
"You killed my yogurt!" --Fred Fredburger
BTW, one of my friends lost around 40 kgs (from ~140 to 100) in about fourteen months, just by cutting snacks and pizza. He didn't exercise, but he never went hungry either. It can be done.
When I observed how easily he lost weight, with only a little discipline, I changed my standard response to "Well, you might be overweight, but don't complain about it. You're not really trying"
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Fat people that hang out with skinny people that work out all the time tend to lose lots of weight...
Sam
The fact that different carbs affect glucose and insulin levels differently, while still having the same amount of calories, isn't useful? Many people in this thread seem to think that 500 calories of fructose will affect the body the same way as 500 calories of sucrose, which isn't true.
Ahh, argumentum ad hominem. If you have information about GI's effectiveness, I'd love to hear it. Insults, not so much.
I know what HFCS means. You should also learn to read, I was comparing HFCS to sucrose, I did not say that HFCS had sucrose in it. Sucrose is 50% fructose, while HFCS is only 55% fructose. I was saying that the increased fructose in HFCS is not enough to make any noticeable differences compared to sucrose, and any difference may be more than made up for by the added sweetness of the HFCS.
Of course, I'm the daft one, when you can't read. Also, that sentence isn't a triple negative. There are two negatives in that sentence, but the sentence can still only be read one way, so I don't see it as a true double negative either. Maybe a bit awkward, but I don't see how to better phrase it. I couldn't say that HFCS did trigger insulin, because thats only true to 45%. What I should have done was explained that sucrose is also 50% fructose and it is the fructose that does not trigger insulin, so sucrose and HFCS have this problem to almost the same degree. I just assumed people would realize I was comparing HFCS to sucrose (as that was in use prior to HFCS), and that sucrose was half fructose (figured most people around here would know that).
Shit adds up at the bottom...
The above is NOT flame bait. It's expression of real life experience.
Moderators - get over yourselves, you don't have a clue.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
shit!
(Filler to appease the Great Spamwall of Slashdot.)
Carbs aren't evil or anything.. they just don't make you feel full. And you usually get too many of them to begin with.
What your friend did will work to a point, likely where he is now. To further lose weight, he'll need to exercise and reduce calories more. You friend is still obese at 220 lbs and needs to lose about 50 more lbs, assuming he's 6'2" (as I am).
I started exercise and diet when i got up to around 240. While I've done well (30lbs in 8 weeks) I still need to lose 35 lbs more. Notice your friend lost 80 lbs in 14 months, or ~1.4 lbs a week. With proper diet and exercise (30 minutes of cardio a day plus weights) I've lost 3.75lbs a week. So it can be done your friends way, but if you really want to get it going, exercise!
"Having fat friends makes you fat" implies that if you have fat friends, you have no choice but to become fat. This is untrue. Article is, once again, idiotic and pure flamebait.
In a social peer environment where everybody else is either plump or really fat, being slim means getting teased at every social event, every family gathering, every "social networking" event.
If you don't eat Grandma's signature dish of deep fried twinkies with buttercream frosting when everybody else is piling their plates high with them, Grandma's feelings get hurt. Ditto for the fried chicken, buttermilk pound cake, candied yams, etc., etc., etc.
If you have to request (or bring your own) healthy food to every event because any vegetable that's there is slathered in cream of mushroom soup and cheddar cheese, you are labeled a snob.
If you have to request (or bring your own) diet soda pop and/or light beer to every barbeque, you are derided as a wimpy, effeminate liberal.
If you host a party for your friends and relatives where you serve the foods that you typically eat instead of the foods they typically eat - grilled, broiled or baked meats instead of fried, deep-fried or chicken-fried, fresh vegetables instead of salt, sugar and cream casseroles, relatively low-cal drinks instead of colored and carbonated high fructose corn syrup, good desserts instead of huge desserts - then your parties will be really low on anyone's list of favorite events, because the food is "weird".
Doritos, sour cream and onion potato chips, bowls of candy or nuts and chocolate-covered strawberries are as tempting to slim people as they are to fat people. It's really easy to be fat. It takes effort to stay slim. By exerting that effort at these social events, by not accepting the food they offer to you, you are saying to your plump/fat/obese friends and relatives, "I don't want to be like you." Or at least, that is how they will interpret it.
If you have a fat social network that does not exert pressure on you to also get fat, either overt or covert pressure, conscious or unconscious pressure, then you are very, very lucky.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
No doubt. I'm actually borderline overweight (i.e., on the border of healthy and overweight), according to the standard BMI. My fat content is about 11-12%, IIRC, which puts me squarely in the middle of healthy. OTOH, I think there are a lot more people who make excuses about how BMI is flawed and argue that they're actually a healthy weight than there are people whose BMI suggests they're fat when they're not. Like you said, all you really have to do it look around to see the truth in the statement that the majority of Americans are overweight. If want a really depressing experience (and who doesn't?), try going to an IHOP. I did a few years back and was deeply saddened by not just the percentage of overweight people, but just how overweight they were. Since I'm at a university with a lot of runners (UVA), I'm not really exposed to the typical American that frequently. When I'm not at the university, I'm often running with a marathon training group - surprisingly, also not very representative. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/fit.nation/obesi
It'd be a little too convient to just blame a virus, but if I did I'd go looking for it in the southeast.
No, it's not so simple
"Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes" and "An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest" PMID: 17183312
A further discussion of obesity and auto-immune disease can be found here.
My personal experience is that as the sarcoid went away, so did the diabetes and extra weight, and the sugar cravings.
Well... you are what you eat.
It's interesting how skinny people always think there is a simple solution: eat less. As someone who was obese (140 pounds overweight) for much of his life, this is one thing in which I am an expert. And I can tell you there IS a simple solution, but that's NOT it. Eating less sends your body into starvation mode, so that any calorie consumed goes directly to fat with no chance of becoming energy. Over-exercising stresses the body, which produces a similar reaction. If you are very overweight and have been so for many years, there is an 80 percent chance this diet will work for you: The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. No, you don't cut out carbs (like Atkins, which can be unhealthy), you don't cut out calories, and you don't cut out fat. You simply eat all your carbs for the day in one meal. The rest of the day you eat low carb. It's that simple. Sounds too good to be true, right? It adjusts for a hunger-cycle imbalance: eating carbs all day is what makes the body produce too much insulin which spirals everything out of control and amplifies obesity. The "diet" (it's really more of a slight alteration of normal eating) is an easy and healthy way to carefully lose lots of weight with no side-effects. And yes, I lost 140 pounds slowly (the good way) over two years. I have the "Jared" jeans to prove it, along with a few "before" pictures. I have been skinny and healthy ever since. The diet, for those who are curious, was developed over a decade by two doctors, who are experimenting and refining their results. Please go to www dot carbohydrateaddicts dot com for more info.
My friend is about 2 m high, that's 6'6". He is broad across the shoulders as well, so 100 kg is close to ideal weight for him. It looks right.
He chose his method because he didn't want it to be too much of a hazzle. I guess whatever works for you is right. 3.75 lbs a week sounds like a lot though.
For my own part I'm quite athletic, I used to exercise. I don't anymore but am generally active. I really should work out to gain a little more muscle mass.
Anyway, good luck with your program!
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
My feelings are hurt by that answer you insensitive clod!
Sincerely, -Dick Nixon
And I'd rather be alive than dead. But if your choice is death, then so be it - I just wish I didn't have to pay money into the pool to support your dumbass choice.
Young people are KIDS, they are PROTECTED from the world until they reach an agreed age of adulthood. If you don't want to be working for a living from the age of 15, STFU! You have it damn good, trust me. No, I don't want to hear about your 'job' at the Mall or how 'hard it is' having to live by being SUPPORTED BY YOUR PARENTS. Just STFU and maybe you will get over yourself in time for your adult life to not be as miserable as you are making your youth life.
Actually, it is fats that produce the quickest feeling of fullness.
Anyone who is interested in relatively up-to-date diet research should check out the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Source. They do a very good job of explaining what dietary research does and does not indicate.
Umm, I hate to burst your little bubble of fat, but 45 minutes isn't shit, especially at such a low speed.
It's obvious that you are lying, or just have a warped sense of what is a reasonable amount of food to eat/exercise to take. I do have a high metabolism. I can eat any type of food, no matter how fattening, without putting on any weight. Do you know why? Because I exercise, and not some bullshit stuff that you did. I walk miles every single day and can do so for hours without feeling tired or needing to take a break. You said you ran 7km/h? I WALK significantly faster than that. I also swim a lot, do sit ups and knuckle press ups.
So the OP's post stands. You were/are fat because you are a lazy, overeating bastard. About the only exercise you were getting was with your mouth.
Then you won't be seeing your fucktarded posts being modded into oblivion and we won't have to put up with fucktards like you again. BTW, keep posting and your karma will eventually reach rock bottom as it already is much lower than it was.
Now you've made me hungry for deep-fried twinkies! (I usually eat healthy foods, but I've definitely not lost the taste for unhealthy foods, as many of my similarly-minded friends say has happened to them.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ahh... well being that tall then he is about right for his height. Its not common that I encounter people taller than me ;-)
You're right, as long as you get the fat off it doesn't matter how you do it, I was just pointing out how it could be made to be a quicker process, if you desire.
Thanks for the good wishes!
That's correct, fat will give you the quickest way to feel full. The problem is that you're injesting exactly what you are trying to rid youself of, so that's not a great way to diet.
Protien on the other hand will be used to build muscle, which is why exercising with weights is recommended as well as a cardio program.
(not the same AC as GPP)
The GI was touched on a while back on the blog of Dr. Michael R. Eades, of Protein Power fame. In addition to learning the reasons why the GI doesn't actually help (it has a lot to do with how the GI is measured, for one -- the measurement does not take into account how long your glucose is elevated, but only by how much at a fixed point in time), by reading the archives you will learn more about nutrition, health, and weight control than you ever wanted to know.
Disclaimer: I am not Dr. Eades. Don't ask me questions that you would want him to answer.
(the captcha is "biology" -- how apropos)
I've known several people who gradually lost a desire for cigarettes as their weekly mileage went up. The cigarettes got in the way of their running, so they chose to give up the cigarettes. It's really hard to quit by focusing on not doing something (like trying to not think of a pink elephant right now). It's easier to quit by focusing on doing an incompatible behavior. Just a thought. I know, I know, you have bad knees. :) (I hear that a lot, but a proper stretching regimen can help with that.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
My favorite one (which I don't have a link for right now) involved two groups (or maybe it was three) of rats. One group had sugar water and all the food they could eat. The other group had artificially sweetened water and all the food they could eat. The latter group gained more weight than the former, because they ate even more food than what was simply required to compensate for the difference between the sugar water and artificially sweetened water. (Both groups gained weight, of course.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Gluttony loves company!
It's high fructose corn syrup that's really the problem, IMO, and not regular fructose. AFAIK, fruitarians don't have a problem with obesity (although they might have other problems).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If that doesn't help, start jogging.
Jogging can be a very poor exercise for the overweight, especially the very overweight. That's a lot of stress to be putting on joints. Exercise is also actually a pretty poor way to burn energy but raises metabolism and adds muscle mass which burns energy even at rest.
One crucial piece of advice I would give: If you're in relatively good shape and notice that you're starting to put on a few pounds, particularly if you're going through a life change (getting married, getting a job, even changing mode of transport etc), start getting it under control immediately. Those pounds creep up on you and before you know it, you're effectively carrying a 50lb rucksack with you in everything you do. You'll be less able to exercise effectively and less inclined (and able) to engage in everyday activities that burn up energy.
Fat is positive feedback. Best avoided.
Rich
You know, extending lifespan at the expense of quality-of-life is something that medicine turned against in recent years. Not that it's any real dichotomy--after a certain point, weight loss is more for fashion than for health. In any case, if you want to spend all your time working out and none of your time being an informed, intelligent human being, I just wish I didn't have to live in a society where you and people like you were allowed to vote. This is perhaps an exaggeration, but it's equally so on both sides--I can probably have a little excess fat without being in poor health, while you can probably be a fitness enthusiast without taking all that much time away from more important things. You just shouldn't be going around calling people "lazy" because they have different priorities than you.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
You hang around fatties, you're hanging around fattening food and people who aren't very willing to engage in physical activities.
Just like hanging out with your friends you end up talking the same way, seeing the same movies and playing the same games, hanging out with your friends you end up eating and living the same way, because you're together doing the same things.
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
HFCS also helps make soda-pop cheaper so more people use it as a water substitute. Amusingly this cheapness is largely because American tax dollars are used to subsidies the ADMs of the world. It is quite funny if your heartless enough to enjoy it. When I was growing up in the 70's soda pop was relatively expensive and was an occasional treat. Now I see a lot of children who consume pop and other sugar drinks routinely. I was always skinny until a few years ago when I hit my late thirties then I began to expand. By just cutting the sugar in my coffee I dropped 20 lbs over a few months. That's all I did and I did it because I was worried that sugar crashing was robbing me of energy. I have never dieted or even considered not eating when I was hungry.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
If the obesity problem were simply a result of us not being used to availability of food, we would have seen nearly constant levels of obesity for the past two or three generations. Instead, we're seeing an order of magnitude increase in morbid obesity (>40% BMI) since the mid 1980s. We weren't all struggling to find food in the mid 1980s. If this study were done in the 1950s comparing against the 1930s (Great Depression), I might believe that explanation, but it just doesn't make sense in this day and age.
In reality, the mass obesity problem coincides perfectly with the rise of processed foods. This got worse after the U.S. government started giving huge corn subsidies and putting high import duties on sugar to encourage use of high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is processed by the body very quickly, but does not trigger the same insulin response as glucose. Thus, your body A. does not feel satiated, so you consume more, B. does not gain the metabolic surge that normally occurs in response to elevated insulin levels, and so does not use all that energy, C. stores the resulting excess energy as fat. Replacing that same amount of fructose with glucose will cause a significant weight loss.
Mid 80's you say?Ronald Reagan, elected amidst the morass of the Iranian hostage crisis, included Donald Rumsfeld as part of his transition team. The day after Reagan took office in 1981, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval of aspartame. The new commissioner of the FDA, a Reagan-Rumsfeld appointee named Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., named a five-person Scientific Committee to review the earlier findings. When the vote went 3-2 against approval of aspartame, Hayes did what any fair-minded citizen might do, and appointed a sixth committee member. The committee voted 3-3, leaving Hull to cast the deciding vote, approving aspartame for use in dry products. Aspartame was then approved for use in soft drinks in 1983.
You can't take the sky from me...
Real men like women that look like women, not prepubescent boys. If you are turned on by a flat chest, flat ass, and straight hips, you might actually prefer men. Go on, give it a try. There's nothing wrong with liking the shape of a man's body. Just don't try to turn all women into your fantasy guy, okay closet cases?
Genetically speaking, it seems intuitive that men would want a fat curvy girl with big hips. Better for making babies, yes? Living closer to nature, being fat would be a sure sign of genetic superiority. But men also want a woman that other men find attractive. When asked to pick out the silhouette of a woman they would like to have with them if marooned on a desert island, most men picked a larger, curvier shape than expected. So guys are pretending to like a body type they don't actually prefer because they think other men prefer it!
Humans are sick little monkeys.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"It's over 33000!"
On track to a population that is 75% _overweight or obese_, as measured by body mass index. Body mass index is a crap measure. If you're at all muscular and not an endomorph, you're likely to be flirting with "overweight" by BMI, if not over it. There's no doubt that there's an obesity problem in the US, but that 75% is just a scare number, not meaningful at all.
That's correct, fat will give you the quickest way to feel full. The problem is that you're injesting exactly what you are trying to rid youself of, so that's not a great way to diet.
Actually, it is. That's why Atkins-type diets produce such spectacular (if generally unsustainable) results.
Fat produces short-term energy and sated feelings. However, it is *not* easily stored as fat. What *is* easily stored as fat is carbs, once they're broken down -- particularly processed simple carbs, such as white bread.
Where you get the strong correlation between eating fat and getting fat is that typically junk foods include large amounts of both fat and simple carbs, because that's how to get cheap crap to taste good. The simple carbs are broken down quickly -- how quickly, you ask? Chew a piece of white bread, hold it in your mouth for about 20 seconds, notice that sugar taste? Yeah, about that quickly -- and since none of your metabolism is requesting more energy at the time since it's awash in fat energy, all those broken down carb calories head straaaaaaight for the fat cells.
The ideal solution, for a generally applicable value of "ideal", is to break your eating up into four to six meals, with 1/3 of your calories from healthy fats (avocado, nuts, yadayadayada); 1/3 of your calories from protein; and 1/3 of your calories from *complex* carbs. Best to completely avoid all forms of grains, but at all costs avoid heavily processed white flour type stuff. Then you will, I pretty much guarantee, lose weight without cutting back on calories or increasing exercise, since you're evening out availability and usage of the energy taken in.
Alternatively, you can do a triathlete's daily training worth of ride/bike/swim every day. Then you can eat whatever the hell you want until you feel like bursting, and you will almost certainly still lose weight rapidly. Hell, I've known triathletes that lost weight on a 9000 cal/day diet while training...
...hang out with fat people.
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
Oh yeah!??? What about Nixon's feelings ????
Here in Moldova bread is considered to be one cause of extra weigh. But we eat usually more bread than in Western Europe and America.
I call bullshit. You can have your cake and eat it too . . . just don't eat too much of it.
Probably about 99% of obesity is due to a failure of self-discipline. I'm living proof. When I graduated from college, I weighed about 150-160 pounds (I wasn't paying close attention because my weight wasn't a problem then). Then I moved away from my father who I hiked with at least once a week, I stopped biking too and from work, and I ate even after I was full. What happened? I ballooned to approximately 200 pounds.
I'm slowly burning it off. How am I doing this? Is it some wonder drug, or new fad diet? No, it's self-discipline, plain and simple. I am following the hacker's diet, but that basically amounts to having self-control and limiting *how* much you eat, not what you eat. I was already eating pretty healthily before I started dieting. I just needed to eat less. I also exercise more now, but that's not important. The important part is, yes, you are going to feel hungry, yes you are going to have hunger pangs. Otherwise, you are not forcing your body to rely on and burn it's fat stores. Unless you are eating an extremely high-fiber/bulky low calorie diet, you are going to have to suffer to lose weight. Even if you exercise, you can't hold down a full time job and exercise enough to stave off the hunger pangs. I know; I've hiked 4, 8, 12 hours, and it keeps the hunger away while I'm hiking, but soon after I stop I get voracious.
And I don't care if you think you have some "condition" that makes you gain weight. You can still lose weight; it doesn't matter if you have hypothyroidism, or you're on a drug that slows your metabolism down; it's very simple: EAT LESS THAN YOU BURN AND YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT.
Now, going back to the main topic: I have fat friends that I have lunch and breakfast with. I've still managed to lose weight. I just don't eat as much as they do. It's called will power, self-control and self-discipline. Stop making excuses for your fat ass.
Nathan's blog
Then if a fat person and a skinny person hang out, which one is dominate?
Most likely, the fat person.
Think about it. If someone is fat, they are not willing or even able to do a lot of athletic activities that a more fit person might do. They probably also eat more often, and may eat less healthy things.
So maybe a fit person, who might normally play volleyball with friends, or camp, or go skiing, or swim, or just go to the county fair and walk around a bit, when they get a new friend who is fat and start hanging around with them more, that new fat friend is probably not going to be interested in doing those things. They probably would rather sit at home and watch DVDs than do anything active. And they probably eat more. And so if you're spending time with them, that means you're sitting around watching DVDs and eating more and guess what - you get fatter too.
paintball
Eating less and exercising more does work. If it doesn't work for you, you were cheating, or just gave up. Funny how there were no obese people in the Nazi concentration camps? Maybe they were on Atkins.
I don't talk to fat people anyway...
I'm shocked--shocked!--that no one has pointed out the meta-case, that associating with other people can cause one to adopt their beliefs and habits. TFA is over-simplified and seems to provide, or at least to be susceptible to misinterpretation.
... the list goes on. That guy also likes to smoke pot, and it seems to work for him. It took a long time to figure out that it doesn't work for me--and it seemed sooo muuuuuuuuuch looooooonger.
Surely most readers have decided to spend time with someone else in order to acquire his/her skills, then discovered that the desired skills weren't the only ones that traversed the interpersonal gap. My first UNIX mentor is one of those guys that can eat anything and stay thin, and he loves to eat cinnamon rolls. Twenty years later, I still must take a moment to recognize that what I think is a craving is just a subconscious association.
Or the guy who has shown me all kinds of interesting things over the years: Perl, Tcl, BSD, graphics programming,
Then there's the guy that I don't hang out with any more. He showed me how to hand-optimize C (I believed in that for nearly two years), made fun of what I thought was important, took me to a gun range (cool), tried to get me to buy some illegal guns (way uncool), and is now living in a remote compound with the proceeds from some corporate stock sale converted to Krugerands buried underground. He watches FOX News 24/7 on a 60" projection TV and calls at least once a month to remind me that he has still has room for two more families in his bomb shelter. That's the exception to the rule, e.g., there are some "fat" people whose company prevents you from being/becoming/staying "fat".
"Nobody's perfect," right? Like no one is perfect from my point of view, but I'm willing to compromise for as long as it seems as though the trade-offs are invisible, or at least acceptable.
Noodle bake: What memes are you passing to your associates--and where did you get them?
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I just went on a diet. Time to ditch all of my fat friends...
"BTW, all this came from the M.S. nutrition teacher I had last semester."
I think you need to find an open source nutrition teacher instead.
It could also be your thyroid (leading to both fatigue and, frequently, a higher "set" point for your weight). Not to get too personal, but have you had your blood levels tested? That said, if your doctor agrees that you're at a healthy weight, then I'd think that's more important than what the media or public think.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No, the question is why are you consuming all this shit with sugars in it in the first place.
Buy raw, unprocessed foods (more veg, less meat) and cook them yourself without adding shit. Stop drinking soda. No, don't "cut down". Stop. Drink water, green tea, and pure fruit juice (not from concentrate, *no* added sugars).
Just stop eating all the processed crap and then you won't have to worry about blaming dead people for your problems.
Well, here's another thing I don't get: brainless retards polluting
Sorry to break your delusions, my dear Neanderthal, but that's at best _religion_. In fact, it's fucking stupid even by most religion's standards, as even the most die hard Christians (e.g., the Jesuits) ended up transcribing manuscripts, operating schools or doing research.
At any rate, that's not how _science_ works. Science means that everything could be inaccurate, nothing is to be taken as absolute proof, and no figure of authority is beyond questioning. Even if Einstein came back from the dead with a great new theory, you're _supposed_ to be skeptical and try to find a hole in it. Going "noo, don't question it because he's smarter than you" is exactly the _opposite_ of science.
So why post such crap in the first place? Do you need the ego-masturbation boost of dragging everyone down to your non-thinking potted-plant level? Or what?
You know, Aristotle thought that the brains are just a big heatsink to keep the blood cool. Think water cooling for the body, if you will. And seeing the above kind of "nooo, don't dare think on your own, you're not worthy of questioning those guys" posts... I swear he must have been right about some people.
You have my compassion, little retard.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"HFCS is not the problem. The problem is simple, too many calories in, too few calories out."
Yes, some people are too quick to blame external reasons, and others are too quick to reject all of them. As with most simple black-or-white arguments, the truth is complicated and in-between.
We now know that two genetically identical mice, fed identical food while living in identical environments, can result in one thin mouse and one obese mouse. The only difference between the two is epigenetic damage caused by environmental toxins while in the womb, and those epigenetic changes can be passed on for several generations. Maybe it wasn't something you ate, but what your grandmother ate...
We also know that in mice the variety of stomach bacteria can mean the difference between fat and thin. Supposedly, people who eat yogurt lose more weight than non yogurt eaters. There are already yogurts sold with bacteria to help other... problems, it's probably only a matter of time before we see yogurts with yeasts to make you thinner.
So, diet, exercise, portions, and lifestyle changes are all very important, but don't be so quick to place all the blame on the overweight person.
Yeah of course, it's not like child rapist people can be interesting or cool to hang out with or anything. Let's lock 'em all up so they don't spread their child abuse around. Now replace child rapists with sexy bitches in the above sentence and see if you agree.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Yeah, it's always somebody else's fault.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
If you've ever been on a diet, you'll know that the single hardest part of dieting is going out to eat with friends. Friends who aren't dieting will often not respect that you don't want to go eat fast food or BBQ or Mexican or Waffle House or anywhere else where the healthy menu choices are limited to either limp iceberg lettuce salad or going hungry. Those that do, may often grow tired of you limiting the groups' choices on where to go to eat. They may simply start inviting you less or deciding on the location with others before inviting you.
And, yes, these people are kind of jackasses for doing this, but what are you going to do? Cut yourself off from your friends or tell them that it's either the jerks or you? After all, from their point of view, it's you being selfish by telling everyone you won't go let them eat where they'd like to if they're going to be with you. Healthy restaurants are often much more expensive than fast food places and may not have food that your friends like if they're used to eating nothing but the grease and starch that is the staple of the modern American diet.
Let's face it, eating together with people is one of the most common and universal means of socializing for mankind. The people you hang out with will have the same dietary habits you do because those are the places you are used to gathering and the food you are all used to eating. If your friends eat healthy food, you'll be forced to go the healthy places and probably won't gain as much weight. If your friends eat unhealthy food, you'll be forced to go to unhealthy places.
The alternative is simply cutting yourself off from your friends, which only affirms the point of the research.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I've been married for 14 years. I did gain a little weight after we got married, but most of my extra weight was already in place by then. We've both lost weight while training for marathons. Although she didn't need to lose any weight in the first place, she still looks great.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What you really want is food chock full of fiber that takes a long time to release sugar into the bloodstream. Protein is one way to do this, but high-fiber, whole-grain bread also works. A salad can also be nice if you don't go crazy with the dressing and if you pick good enough greens not to make the flavor and texture become tedious quickly.
Really, the goal is to feel full without consuming a massive amount of calories and to keep your blood sugar levels from spiking up and down (creating feelings of hunger even when you're full).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Depends on the food.
If you take some minimal time and emmerse yourself in cookings, learn a bit on how to handle a knife, basic techniques, try out a lot of recipes, etc. You can be known in your circle of friends as someone who "knows how to cook" and "makes decent food", regardless of how much butter/sweet sweet bacon fat/etc goes into your food. It's about cooking *tasty* things, not necessarily fatty things. It's not actually that hard. Spend a few dollars extra on fresh, in-season vegetables, instead of canned. Invest in a few quality spices (or grow you're own on your windowsill for pennies), vinegars, oils, etc. Try a lot of recipes and experiment. Food blogs are an excellent source for this. Take a little time to cook real food, look back at some old things you hate --I hated those purple beets growing up, but they grow these absoletly phenomenal golden beets around my parts that are mild and sweet and taste great simply roasted in an oven --no oil/butter, no salt, no pepper.
Hell learning how to make a few simple salad dressings that don't suck has vastly increased my vegetable in-take. Learning a few dynamite salads and playing with them as things come in and out of season has been great. It's gotten to the point where I actually get cravings for salad --something a country boy growing up in cattle country never thought would happen.
Case-in-point, a recent food gathering I had (I cook the food, some friends bring the wine) I had a simple salad of fresh ingredients (good asparagus, green beans, simple home-made croutons, and some quick marinated cherry tomatoes in cinnamon, some good quality sherry vinegar, and a splash of olive oil) totally steal the show from my ultra-fat main course (a pan-fried(in oil) honey-mustard chicken schnitzel in a *butter*-caper sauce). I've never had someone turn down the healthy options that I cook as "nasty health-food" because there are ways to do it right.
And since when do people turn down the lean option you presented? A good BBQ'd steak for my kingdom! who turns that down for some nasty chicken-fried steak --you hang out with some ****ed up people.
Eating less and exercising more does work.
Amputation also is 100% effective.
Different people have different drives, and different responses to stimuli. People (especially doctors) like you are exactly why we have a problem. They say, "I don't have a problem, I can control my eating and be happy - so obviously everyone else is a lazy slob." Why should people have to choose between being hungry all the time and being fat? Do you have to make that choice?
Some people have a higher threshold to pain. Some people don't get hungry as easily.
What is needed is education on methods of eating that can help elimate getting fat and hunger. Claiming that the problem doesn't exist is not helpful.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Comment removed based on user account deletion
this is absolutely, unequivocally wrong in the majority of cases. i'm on a moderate diet where i feel great (my worst day on the diet is better than my best day on the average american carbohydrate fest), i have excess energy to play basketball twice a week, do cardio twice a week (or more) and lift weights three times a week (a nice side effect of my diet is i don't over produce lactic acid so when i picked up weights for the first time in 20 years, i didn't get sore like i did 20 years earlier in the high carbo diet - it is funny to see my muscular friends get all sore after a workout and me, the skinny guy, doesn't get sore). I'm losing about a lb of fat per week (8 lbs in 8 weeks, some water loss, some muscle gain to offset some fat loss). i'm just shy of 5'11", i weighed in at 170.5 lbs this morning - not bad for 40+ year old. i can tell i have about more lbs of fat to go until i have gotten 100% rid of the fat around my waist and behind. yes, that's an 8 pack at 40 plus. ny time frame is jan 1, 2008 - so i have plenty of time to lose the excess fat and offset some of the fat weight loss with muscle mass gains.
i've never felt better and...
i. don't. starve. i'm rarely hungry.
the diet is the ultimate moderate diet, too. it is called the zone diet. there is a plethora of information on the web about it. the former heaviest man in the world chose the zone diet over surgery and he lost 400 lbs in the first year.
http://www.drsears.com/zonemondaysfeatureopen.page ?zoneMondayID=284
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257620,00.html
PBS scientific american did a study on diets and the Zone fared very well...
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1401/features/robin.htm
A 47 year old woman went from 247 to 2002 lbs in 6 months and, when asked what she liked best about the diet, Robin responded, "What I really like is how good you feel when you are "in the Zone". You are rarely hungry, and you just feel really, really good - it has a tremendous impact on your mood - unlike other diets I've been on"
notice, she didn't mention the 45 lbs gone, rather, she mentioned how she felt great on the diet and how this diet didn't leave her feeling hungry. this mirrors my personal experience. my worst day on the zone is better than my best day on the average american diet (on a physical, well being level, all else being equal).
>blockquote>
And no, you don't have a glandular problem - you got that way one bite at a time, just like everyone else.
i don't believe all people are created equal in how their bodies process food. for example, i'd bet my wife has eaten more food than i have and i know she exercises less, yet she weighs 130 and change and i weigh 170 and small change. if our bodies handled food equally, she should weigh more than i do.
we all know people who can eat pop tarts all day and not gain a pound and we know others who seemingly just look at food and add a pound.
everyone's body is genetically UNIQUE. the variation might be small or might be huge, it just depends. surely there are nurture issues to go along with the nature issues - it isn't a simple issue. my experience is that the zone diet tends to equalize the playing field - at least as far as excess fat loss, creating energy and a general feeling of well being.
the press erroneously refers to the zone as a "high protein" or "low carb" diet. both these descriptions are wrong. it is a protein moderate, carb moderate, monounsaturated fat moderate diet.
lean meats, vegetables, fruits and nuts are the zone staples (duh, it just make
As for sub-Saharan, I'm so sick of textbooks giving examples of sub-Saharan cultures that do this or that.
Yes, because God forbid that the most culturally and genetically diverse subsection of humanity be used in an examination of what is and isn't culturally universal. Dominant majorities only, please!
The reason these cultures get referred to a lot is that they're some of the few cultures left on the planet not significantly changed by contact with the major Abrahamic religions, Confuscianism, or the Indic traditions that have dominated world culture. They give us a window into traditions far more ancient than our own which have survived through isolation.
A woman transported several centuries would change from being desirable to undesirable because of the dynamics of food supply dynamics of the society? Then would a famine ridden society see a 400lb woman as the most beautiful woman they have ever seen?
Actually, there are places today where you could transport such a woman and find them desirable. Mauritania is one such place where wealthy people send their daughters to be fattened to make them more marriage-worthy. After all, they're a desert culture and food resources have been scarce until modern times. (The article does note that tastes are changing, though.)
In addition, a lot of sub-Saharan African cultures are continuing the preference for overweight men and women because of AIDS. AIDS generally causes severe weight loss, and being fat is a sign of probable health. This actually leads some people to seek to gain weight to avoid the stigma.
Now, 400 lbs might be a bit much. But you could certainly drop a 250-300 lbs woman into medieval Europe or earlier and have people assume that she was someone of great wealth. The Greeks and Romans seem not to have prized being overweight, but fertility statues from Stone Age cultures world wide show a preference for larger women.
Essentially, humans will instinctively look for signs of health in breeding. In times of starvation, we look for those who are well-fed. In times of abundance, we look for those that are "fit," but in both cases we are looking for mates who will live long and produce better children. It's just that the easily spotted criteria changes.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
No, the U.S. has been mostly a nation of plenty for a couple hundred years or more. Depending on how you count, that's easily 6-8 generations. Mass obesity has only come in the last generation or so.
Then why did Hoover run on the campaign slogan "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?"
Remember that this was before the Great Depression. Food didn't start to get really cheap in the US until the last two generations. While starvation was by no means rampant, many of the things we take for granted today were food only enjoyed by the wealthy or for special occasions for much of US history -- chicken was one of those things.
It's the cheap abundance of food (in combination with the changes in processing you've mentioned) that has had a huge impact.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The study says that having friends who make unhealthy life choices tends to lead to one making unhealthy life choices. This is not incompatible with the idea that it's your choice, but you seem to make it out like it's nothing more than an excuse -- as if to say that no one is ever influenced by the choices of those around them, and we should never look to the outside for why we make the choices we do.
You dismissed a rigorous study that examined 32 years worth of data about over 12,000 people based on a dogmatic belief that all choices occur in a vacuum and that no one should ever look to their surroundings for why they might be acting the way they do. Did you read the study before giving it a knee-jerk dismissal, or were you too much in a rush to dominate the discussion by trying to get your personal anecdote of "real life experience" in early? Read the study. It's pretty interesting, but you might want to bone up on confidence intervals first.
To summarize, you took the exact same stance of dogma over reason as a young-Earth creationist, a global-warming skeptic, or a flat Earther would. It was your sheer wrongheadedness and your belligerent attitude about it that caused your post to be deservedly marked as Flamebait.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Depends. Putting religious beliefs on the morality of avoiding death aside for a moment...
If I suffer for 80 years, will technology advance to the point where you can keep me going indefinitely? What if your future self can indulge in centuries of the same sort of eating habits (simulated or real) that you deny yourself today... is that worth struggling for?
Short-term gratification may cut you off from a greater benefit down the road. Who knows what wonders you're missing out on if you live life only for today?
(Besides, gorging your way to an early death does not seem like a way to live happily. What little weight I've gained since college has only made me less and less happy thanks to the variety of minor health issues it has caused. I can't imagine tacking on 700 more lbs and being happy with life.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually, it is. That's why Atkins-type diets produce such spectacular (if generally unsustainable) results.
The Atkins type diets produce the same results as other kinds of diets. If you'll look into critisms of the diet, you'll see that its likely water loss that caues the inital drop in weight.
Fat produces short-term energy and sated feelings. However, it is *not* easily stored as fat. What *is* easily stored as fat is carbs, once they're broken down -- particularly processed simple carbs, such as white bread.
You're right, its not easily stored in fat cells, but it does tend to clog your arteries up. Simple carbs are what I was advising against, for the reason you state.
Where you get the strong correlation between eating fat and getting fat is that typically junk foods include large amounts of both fat and simple carbs, because that's how to get cheap crap to taste good. The simple carbs are broken down quickly -- how quickly, you ask? Chew a piece of white bread, hold it in your mouth for about 20 seconds, notice that sugar taste? Yeah, about that quickly -- and since none of your metabolism is requesting more energy at the time since it's awash in fat energy, all those broken down carb calories head straaaaaaight for the fat cells.
I very much doubt you'll lose much weight eating a 3/4 lb cheeseburger from Wendy's but throw away the bun. If you don't use the short term enegry from fat, it will be stored for later.
The ideal solution, for a generally applicable value of "ideal", is to break your eating up into four to six meals, with 1/3 of your calories from healthy fats (avocado, nuts, yadayadayada); 1/3 of your calories from protein; and 1/3 of your calories from *complex* carbs. Best to completely avoid all forms of grains, but at all costs avoid heavily processed white flour type stuff. Then you will, I pretty much guarantee, lose weight without cutting back on calories or increasing exercise, since you're evening out availability and usage of the energy taken in.
This of course is hogwash. To lose weight you MUST use more than you take in. Keeping your calorie intake high even eating as you describe will maintain (or increase) your weight. Think about it, if you're taking in just as many calories, why does your body need to burn any fat for engery? The answer is that it doesn't, and thus you will keep (or increase) you weight. You'll get fatter if you're calorie intake remains more than you need.
Alternatively, you can do a triathlete's daily training worth of ride/bike/swim every day. Then you can eat whatever the hell you want until you feel like bursting, and you will almost certainly still lose weight rapidly. Hell, I've known triathletes that lost weight on a 9000 cal/day diet while training...
If you spend all day working out, yes. But most of us have regular day jobs. I personally spend about an hour a day exercising; 4 days of cardio + weights, and two days of Dragon boat paddling. But the triathelete is burning much more than 9000 calories day, which is why his 9000 calorie a day diet causes them to lose weight.
It all comes down to calories; you need to use more than you take in, which is why those of us with desk jobs need to work out harder..
Actually HFCS is worse than sugar because it doesn't get processed by you body to send the right satiety signals to your body -- you get the calories but you don't feel full as a result! BAD THING! This is the really ugly side of HFCS.
Also remember that in the late 1800s the average per capita consumption of sugar was on the order of 2 pounds per YEAR. Now we're close to that per week.
That you think "looks like a man" when you see a thin woman?
I think "hey she's thin" and you think "she looks like a dude". That says way more about your gay tendencies than mine.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
I agree with you that HFCS is the problem, but not in the way that most people think. Its not that HFCS is worse for you then sugar, its that its far cheaper then sugar, and so its used in everything from bread, to meat, to drinks. Essentially, it brought the cost of processed food down to the point that it doesn't cost McDonalds anything to 'supersize' it. They offer it, and we as animals will often take them up on the offer as it makes sense from a survival in the wild standpoint to eat as much as is available.
An anecdote to demonstrate my point: My friend Chris eats Burger King almost every single day, and has for as long as I can remember. He weighs 127 pounds, hasn't gained a pound since high school over 10 years ago, and doesn't work out (literally sits in front of the computer all day, both at work and at home). Why doesn't he gain weight, everything in his meal is saturated with HFCS and therefor calories? The answer is, he orders off the dollar menu and gets a small hamburger, small fry, and small coke. I'm not positive but I think that the 'happy meals' are larger, then his dinners. He might not have the healthiest diet in the world, but he doesn't seem any worse off for it.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Anyway, by "jogging" above I really meant "make yourself active". An overweight person should start by walking as much as possible, take the stairs instead of the elevator, and so on. If even that's strenuous due to extreme overweight he won't get a good effect, and he risks load injuries. In that case exercise biking is a good alternative, swimming is even better. The buoyancy of the water will take the strain off of his body, while still enabling him to expend that excess fat. He _will_ get almost immediate results (1-2 weeks), which is very important. It helps a lot to see that it's actually working.
I completely agree with your opinion about catching obesity in its infancy. But, even if you fail that, it's still not very difficult to correct your mistake. It's all about imposing a frame of mind upon yourself when it comes to eating habits, and it doesn't necessarily involve much of a sacrifice of anything in your lifestyle. My tall, previously overweight friend still drinks as much beer as ever, which is quite a lot.
If, however, you blame it on Nixon, you've already lost. That was the point of my first post in this thread
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
My mom uses an electric wheat grinder for making flour, and then makes her own bread.
p g
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/whisper_mill_3.j
"I'm not in the mood to argue like a child anymore today."
Fixed that for you.
It's funny though how you act like a jackass, admit it, I call you on it, and you still seem to think it's ok to act like a jackass.
What mental disorder do you have that causes such behavior?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Like people have not been doing that for the last sixty years. You can't tell me that all of the sudden 75% of the country is doing this and that is responsible for the fat epidemic that's happened since the 1980's. Something's changed and it's not football.
Might it be a big dropoff in physical activity? Kids are lazier, go out less (due in part to paranoid parents) and don't get any sort of physical workout... and manual labor jobs that provide exercise in and of themselves are a smaller and smaller part of the economy.
But I admit, that speaks to individual responsibility, and blaming large corporations is much easier and takes less mental effort.
"Less effort"... hmmm....
Don't forget exercise! Portions are jacked and the hfcs thing is scary, but you can get away with a lot nutritionally if you get simply off your ass and burn if off. Go to Paris if you don't believe me, and take a gander at what these rail-thin middle aged women are able to pack away. It's really impressive. The corn syrup problem has a quick fix (stop tinkering with sugar tariffs) but portions are going to continue catering to the basest impulses of the hoi polloi. I think pushing exercise will be the only solution. And it's a social activity, no less.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
In a social peer environment where everybody else is either plump or really fat, being slim means getting teased at every social event, every family gathering, every "social networking" event.
I don't know how often these kind of events happen for you, but for most people they are a rare enough occurance that they can just go and eat whatever they want for that one afternoon or whatever and it's not going to make them fat. Besides, nowadays you can just claim you're allergic to dairy products or something and people aren't going to really question it.
There are more interesting answers than the standard, intellectually lazy "it's their own damn fault. period.".
Or the even lazier "it's all the high fructose corn syrup consortium's fault".
of the study.
Yes, eat less calories then you use and you loose weight. No one doubts that. The study does not say if you exercise and eat properly you will gain weight by being near overweight people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Fatty, it's gotta be the SHOES!"
t egorized/marsblackmon_1.jpg
http://americancopywriter.typepad.com/photos/unca
Yeah, I'm aware that some people absorb calories from food easier, and some people burn calories faster, but the fact remains, you get fat from eating more calories than you burn.
I also wasn't placing all the blame on the overweight person, I was just saying there is not some magical food that will make you fat if you eat it.
Ultimately, it is the overweight person's responsibility though. Blaming fast food or HFCS or whatever doesn't help the situation.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
"A 47 year old woman went from 247 to 2002 lbs in 6 months "
Wow, she must be a real porker ... :-)
Seriously though: "for example, i'd bet my wife has eaten more food than i have and i know she exercises less, yet she weighs 130 and change and i weigh 170 and small change. if our bodies handled food equally, she should weigh more than i do."
Studies show that, on average, women walk several miles more a day then men - housework, chasing after the kids, groceries, etc. 3 miles a day more might not sound like much, but that's 1,000 miles a year. Similarly, women do 40% more housework than men. That also burns off the calories.
Comparing those graphs might have some measure of validity, but put this along side the changes in the entertainment across our country also.
In the 60's indoor entertainment consisted of mediocre TV, Card and board games, Reading, a few other things, but not much to keep kids from going outside and playing or doing things that required physical activity.
Between then and now we have progressively gotten more and more sedentary entertainment. How many gaming systems are in th eaverage american home, how many computers with games on them, and the sheer number of movies is high enough that you could live in front of your TV and never watch the same thing twice.
Our foods are becoming increasingly processed, increasing the amount of unprocessible ingredients that our bodies have to store in fat cells until we can clean them out. Just look at butter, we "advanced" to margerine (fake butter), then advanced to imitation margerine (fake fake) and in some cases knock-offs of the imitation.
Cost of living goes up disproportionate to income, nothng new. But the entertainment budget consumes a larger portion of the average budget so people buy what food they can afford out of what is left. The easy food to get is the food that is not healthy and it is natural to gravitate to the path of least resistance and the point of least effort.
Lastly, with activity lower and work environments and entertainment becoming more sedentary, neurotic behavior kicks in. The body knows it needs to do something, so generally speaking we give it something to do, we munch on chips. 1 handful is a full serving, but we eat the whole bag. We consume more junk food and exercise less. Our kids grow up in front of a screen TV, Computer, handheld or portable. Our kids text instead of even talking, learning a shorthand language so they do not even need to know how to spell real words.
We are loosing our work ethics, we are loosing our drive for real life success and with that we are sitting by and letting our rights and freedoms slowly be washed away with government rules and laws telling us more adn more of what we can no longer do. We sit back blabbering about the weakness of our neighbors and what they are doing wrong, wihle our freedom of speach is slowly being stripped away. Our focus is being targetted on each other so we don't realize we have lost the right to complain about overbearing government practices. We point out how bad our neighbor is as we loose our rights to defend ourselves against government oppression. We are busy argueing over distraction while our right to pray in silence is taken away in public places replacing freedom of religion with freedom to oppress each others religion. There was a time that it was required to learn to speak and read at least a minimal amount of american english to become a citizen inthis country, but as the meaning of the forming of our nation gets washed away withour rights, what difference does it make if we can or can not communicate with each other.
I wonder how many will actually read this. It may be too long for most of our blurb society.
Does this work in reverse?
I don't know how often these kind of events happen for you, but for most people they are a rare enough occurance that they can just go and eat whatever they want for that one afternoon or whatever and it's not going to make them fat.
For someone who needs to lose 50+ pounds, even just one event like this a month can slow down their weight loss by 25-50% . If several of them fall in the same season (e.g. summer) it could realistically mean flatlining for 3-4 months at a time.
The more insidious events are the frequents outings with friends that were discussed pretty well here.
> This of course is hogwash. To lose weight you MUST use more than you take in.
Okay, I phrased that inaccurately. What I meant was "without NOTICING THAT YOU ARE cutting back on calories". As in if you have smaller spread out meals with a proper calorie distribution, you won't feel hunger pangs, which is why most diets don't work consistently, people don't have the willpower to resist deprivation feelings. But the closer you go to a grazing model (the "Zone" or "Paleolithic" type diets) and therefore the closer you get to eating only what you need at the moment instead of gorging to store stuff up for later, you'll naturally tend towards eating only a couple hours' worth of calories instead of six to eight hours worth, which will work out for most people to less total intake even though you're actually feeling more full, thus you don't FEEL that you're cutting back. The trick to making that work is basically making your carb portion complex carbs so that you get the energy from them gradually as opposed to the rush and insulin spike from simple carbs.
It *is* difficult to correct that mistake. In part because it's all proportional. I know a slim girl who when she thinks she's overweight goes out and knocks that couple of pounds off in no time. Firstly, she can do that because she's fit and secondly, on an overweight person, that couple of pounds is a drop in the ocean. I personally have lost a decent amount of weight and sometimes it's almost depressing how much more there is to go, realistically 2-3 times what I have lost already (but I feel I'm in the right frame of mind to keep it up).
Being overweight makes you lethargic and, if you are at all sensitive to body image, less likely to participate in social occasions (which are usually exercise in themselves). Some people out there are effectively carrying a second person on their frame. Most cardio type exercise is going to be difficult like that.
My point is that no one should believe it is easy to lose weight. It isn't (except for the lucky few). But it's worth doing. It takes willpower and planning and determination, especially to get through that first hump of not much happening and into the achievement stage.
Rich
Well, that changes things quite a bit. You are right, and that's what my trainer told me.. have snacks with protien at 10 and 3 between my meals. Protien is a better choice than fat for reasons I've outlined; it does quite a good job keeping you "full" and its not adding unnecessary fat, and you are giving your muscles what they need to build.
Yet - somewhere down the line, this study will be used as an excuse.
Jimmy! why are so fat?
Well gee mom, my other 2 brother-cousins Jimy and Jimmie are fat, so I am too.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Wow - the anonymous chicken has struck again.
I also see you haven't learned any new words yet.
You also appear to have come out of hibernation 30 centuries too early. You're still a sub-single celled organism - with only half the chromosomes you need to reproduce.
Keep waiting... some millienia you may actually reach amoeba state.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I wasn't going to go that far, because the amount of physical work that even a very active person does is trivial compared to the amount of calories in even a very constricted diet.
You've got to think of it as a dynamic process. A body is pretty good at estimating how many calories it needs each day. Think about it, if 3500 extra calories give you one pound of fat, a little over 100 calories a day leads to a pound of fat each month, or 12 pounds in a year. Your daily exercise is relevant because it's about the amount people are typically overeating.
"You're right and I was an asshole, but now I'm justifying it by... still being an asshole."
Again, you trolled, I called you on it, yet somehow, in your tiny little pea brain, you blame this on me.
How long have you been a Republican?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"How else would YOU describe someone with a flat chest, possibly narrowish hips, and not much of an ass?"
Did you not read the part where I wrote "I think 'hey she's thin'"?
You're not very bright are you?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"I don't blame this on you"
Yes you did liar. Read your own posts.
Y"ou have to ask yourself, why do posts mentioning closeted homosexuality push your buttons so hard?"
You have to ask YOURSELF, where have I referenced homosexuality at all in my last three replies?
Trolling assholes who get called on being assholes, admit they're assholes, and then lie afterwards like you did to justify being an asshole push my buttons. You're the one who brought up homosexuality again.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"Your "arguments" are getting more and more deranged."
Um you're the one who admitted to trolling but attacked me when I called you on it. And I'm deranged.
"I think that if I keep responding, you will be compelled to respond."
Says the guy who replied 20 minutes after I did, when I took the weekend off. Save that stuff buddy, we both know who's off kilter here. I had the whole weekend, but you replied instantly. Pot, kettle, you, all black.
"It's disgusting, like owning a pile or raw sewage."
Speak to your parents, they'll be able to help you cope like they did.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Oh quit whining. You made the choice to post your diatribe, now take responsibility. Quit blaming others for your own problems.
It is however your fault that you look at women and decide they look like men.
"Sounds like someone's a homophobe!"
Right, you look at women, decide they're like men, and that it disgusts you. That definitely makes you a homophobe, but why admit it to me?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"Of course you haven't said it..." at all. Anywhere, in any for or fashion.
"Please actually read my comments before replying to them and wasting my time further."
I did, you made a claim, and are now trying to avoid supporting it, because I caught you lying and you can't admit it.
Quote or admission, that's all you have left.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Fair enough. You never actually admitted you like thin, mannish women. You simply refuse to admit that flat-chested, narrow-hipped women look like members of the flat-chested, narrow-hipped male gender. I'm sure catching me in an unsupported inference will completely make up for being caught in an absurd contradiction yourself, at least in your petty mind.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
"You never actually admitted you like thin, mannish women."
So you're a liar. 'Nuff said.
"You simply refuse to admit that flat-chested, narrow-hipped women look like members of the flat-chested, narrow-hipped male gender."
NO liar, I refuse to admit that they look like men and not thin women. YOU are the one insisting they look like men, so why are you trying to assign your point to me? Telling me I think something won't make me think it, no matter how many times you try.
"I'm sure catching me in an unsupported inference"
It's called lying. I caught you lying, no surprise you'd downplay it.
"will completely make up for being caught in an absurd contradiction yourself, at least in your petty mind."
There is no contradiction, and I defy you to find one liar. I just caught you lying again. I have been consistent with my point throughout, while you have resorted to lying, which you do again here.
I have destroyed you, your moronic point, and your credibility liar. Now go ahead and deny it, while failing to post any "contradiction" once again proving that you'll lie in whatever way necessary to advance your argument.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
I defied you to find a contradiction, you failed to find one. I knew you were lying and so did you. "It's something called a fact, and your continued denial of reality has been the entire point this whole time" "It's something called a fact," Wait something that subjective, that you think women look like men, is a fact? Wow, not only are you a liar, you're too stupid to look up the definition of fact and use the word correctly. So now I caught you lying again. And why is it your kind always calls troll while knee-deep in their obvious trolling effort? I own you. And you know it, and now you're inches from a tantrum because you can't do a fucking thing about it. But you keep telling yourself that it's a fact that women look like men, and it's not something off with you. The rest of us will do what we can not to burst your sad little bubble, while covertly laughing at your self loathing.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
At least if I told you how old I was, my response would be true.
The same cannot be said about you, based on your history.
As an aside, it always gives me a chuckle when someone like you acts like an immature ass then attempts to portray someone else as immature.
So now you're a hypocrite and a liar. But you were already.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.