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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."
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.
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CowboyNeal must be fat.
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.
Would you even want those benefits?
...If my friends hear about this, they'll start abandoning me in droves...
I am not left-handed, either!
"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.
Eating is the new terrorist
When they took away my drugs I did not speak up.
When they took away my nicotine I did not speak up.
When they took away my food...
liqbase
Correlation does not mean causation... 'nuff said.
Did you RTFA? Or just assume correlation.
It could very well be like many other biological items... like women who spend time together tend to align their menstrual cycles... or do you think that's another 'correlation'?
Perhaps the body takes 'fat cues' from your peer group -- if you spend a lot of time with fat people your that might trigger a biological response to store energy... in the same way that throwing up is 'contagious'... where your body sees others doing something, and this triggers the same survival instinct says that if something the people around you ate is making them sick it might be a good idea to get rid of whatever you ate too, since its likely the same stuff.
I'm not saying its true and even if it is true, I'd expect there are likely other elements at play too -- like if you hang out with people who don't excersie you'll probably be less inclined to exercise yourself -- etc, but just writing it off with a sarcastic 'correlation not causation 'nuff said' post is just close minded and ignorant.
I'd certainly be interested in knowing if there is a biological/biochemical factor to it.
it's better than nothing :'(
Will there be chairs around?
Karnal
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.
Sorry, but if you take a look around you (at least in the US) fat people are definitely the majority.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
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!
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.
do phat friends make you phat?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Does having dumb friends make you dumb?
No, but socializing with them will make you ACT like if you're dumb. The point of the study is that you LEARN from your friends to eat more and more often.
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.
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.
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
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!
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
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.
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.
By weight, volume, or population?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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.
Being fat is a choice. You choose to start the day with bacon and eggs, you choose to drink soda and other high-calorie beverages, you choose to stuff those cheeseburgers into your fat face. You choose not to get up off your ass and get some exercise.
Comparing yourselves to minorities who have actually been oppressed is sickening.
"It was a billion times better than cobol, but still really retarded." -AC
I suggest you read the peer-reviewed journal article rather than sounding off with the oft-repeated (and often true) correlation/causation comment. There's a reason they look at so many cases in the study... and there's a reason that the journals are peer reviewed.
to email me: take my
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
"It could very well be like many other biological items... like women who spend time together tend to align their menstrual cycles... or do you think that's another 'correlation'?"
There we have actual evidence that hormones play a role. If all we had was a study showing that women who live together have closely aligned menstrual cycles, all we would have would be a correlation and no evidence of a causation. It could easily be a statistical coincidence, or it could be caused by common environmental factors. It would be irresponsible for a scientists to claim one woman's period can cause another woman's period with just that information.
"Perhaps the body takes 'fat cues' from your peer group -- if you spend a lot of time with fat people your that might trigger a biological response to store energy..."
Thats nothing but pure speculation by a /.er who obviously has no knowledge of the scientific process. And who is obviously ignorant of the study (did you RTFA?), as proximity had no impact (there is a correlation between fat friends across the country, but not fat neighbors living next door to each other). Its about the equivalent of me speculating that Lindsey Lohan (or whatever her name is) was carrying those drugs because a drug lord had kidnapped her parents and was forcing her to drive them to Portugal. In other words, your hypothesis is completely useless, and by stating it all you have done is waste precious brainpower.
The only hypothesis I've heard regarding it is that it is caused by a person's standards of what is an ideal weight being set by their friends. And thats a hypothesis. No one in the study is claiming having a fat friend causes you to be fat, because they understand the fact that correlation does not mean causation.
"but just writing it off with a sarcastic 'correlation not causation 'nuff said' post is just close minded and ignorant."
Its not "writing it off" to state that the /. headline (Study Proves Having Fat Friends Makes You Fat) is badly worded at best.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
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.
Not being a minority did stop women from being treated that way for millenium...
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that fat people are th elast socialy acceptable peer group to abuse. The main reason for this is because it is perceived to be a lack of will power or moral fibre that got them that way in the first place.
Oddly enough, obesity seems to be mostly a disease of first world societies. Could it be that human evolved to live in an environment of scarcity and that in 2-3 generations we haven't yet managed to rewire ourselves to adjust to living in an environment of plenty.
The reason that the majority of people are overweight is that for normal[1] people living normal[1] lives they consume far more calories than they burn.
[1] Normal is a mathematical concept. It is a form of average. If we want to change what normal is we need significant social change regarding lifestyles to permit people to eat healither foods, have the time and motivation to exercise physically and to show more restraint in what they consume.
And it is likely it will take a major shift in work/life balance across all sectors of industry for this to happen.
This isn't saying people can't take personal responsibility for their actions, it's saying that human nature being what it is, unless it is easier to live a healthy life than it is to live an unhealthy life - people will continue to expand.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
That's because us fat people don't walk around. How do you think we got fat?
My brain is overly lubricated
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
Religion is not a choice, parents force it on their children. Get someone young enough, and it takes a lot of insight and rational thought to shake it, more than most people have.
Even if you grow up a fat kid (I did), you can lose the weight when you get old enough to realize that being obese is not in your long term interest.
"It was a billion times better than cobol, but still really retarded." -AC
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.
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.
I thought fat friends made you look thin?
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.
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.
Hell yeah. Fat chicks' mouths and tongues get a lot of exercise. Fat chicks are lonely. You do the math...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Eating and exercise habits take a lot of work to change, just like religious habits. I wouldn't assume they're any easier.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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).
Oddly enough, obesity seems to be mostly a disease of first world societies. Could it be that human evolved to live in an environment of scarcity and that in 2-3 generations we haven't yet managed to rewire ourselves to adjust to living in an environment of plenty.
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. Most people are obese not because of genetics, laziness, or overconsumption. Most people are obese because for years we've been taught to eat incorrectly and because the quality of our food has taken a substantial decline.
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.
Similarly, when your body consumes a large amount of food at once, it can't use it all immediately, so much of that energy gets stored. That's why consuming proteins are better for you than consuming sugars and starches from a weight perspective. Note: you should not eat all protein. You do need other stuff to prevent lots of colon problems later in life, and many sources of protein bring fat along for the ride, which is even worse than (at least complex) carbohydrates.
However, without changing what foods you eat at all, you can significantly reduce your weight by spreading it more evenly throughout the day. Fix yourself a normal lunch, but instead of eating the whole thing, put aside a third of it and consume it in mid-afternoon.
Case in point, I've tried exercise and diet with no success as all. However, I recently lost a substantial amount of weight while consuming substantially more calories than before. I replaced my usual HFCS-sweetened beverage at lunch with an entire extra meal later in the day, drinking only water and fruit juices. I'm guessing I now take in half again more calories, but I weigh ten or twelve pounds less (depending on the mood my digital scale is in) and have kept the weight off for a couple of months now.
Your mileage may vary, but it has been my experience that total calorie consumption is only a very small part of the obesity picture, and not the most important part by any means.
Oh, yeah, and don't get me started on diet sodas. They're even worse than HFCS-sweetened sodas at causing people to gain weight. (Source: University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.) If you're overweight, switching from "diet" sodas to regular sodas might actually cause you to lose weight.... Talk about false advertising....
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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.
haha! Eat all you want fatty! Your man boobs give you strength and vigor! Your own body will tell you when to lose weight when you start heaving after the first flight of stairs... it'll give you motivation to gain that muscle but retain that fat for that extra push!! You'll only grow bigger and stronger!! Sure, you'll look better to the little kiddies when you're slim and wirey but that's all bullshit when PUSH comes to SHOVE!!!! C'mon bitch push it further!!!
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.
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.
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...
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.
Depends on how fat they are. Skinny chicks aren't attractive to me. Better for the wrong parts to be a little too big than for the right parts to be too small.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Being fat is a choice. You choose to start the day with bacon and eggs, you choose to drink soda and other high-calorie beverages, you choose to stuff those cheeseburgers into your fat face. You choose not to get up off your ass and get some exercise.
I didn't really "choose" to be fat. I did choose to take medicine whose side effect was major weight gain but the alternative was death, and I'd rather get through the issue and work off the weight later than be worm food. After gaining 110 lbs, I've seen exactly how fat people live life and the work required to get that weight back off.
As a fat person, you can still vote, still have a job, still do generally "everything" you expect. Except be comfortable in airplanes, or ride some of the rollercoasters at the amusement park. Oh, and be listened to as attentively as the thin person next to you. Or be taken as seriously at a job interview as the next thin person. It's subtle but real, and my thin friends don't see it at all. In that way it is similar to being a middle-class black person at a white-collar job.
(Of course the "oppression" isn't nearly as bad as actual black middle class experience these days. But it mirrors the lighter end of it, and for many middle-class white people it's the closest they'll come to it. See Ellis Cose's excellent book "The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Do Prosperous Blacks Still Have the Blues?" for good discussion covering the entire spectrum of black oppression including the "not being taken seriously" part.)
As for losing weight, once your body has gained a huge amount of weight and kept it on for more than a few months, losing the weight becomes a real challenge. Dieting means not eating with friends and family anymore which here in America means instant social isolation. No more potlucks at church, no more barbecues, and no more food at parties. Your life is literally: work, exercise, count calories, and find individually fulfilling things to do in the 2 remaining evening hours of the day while your friends are out having a life.
Exercise also requires a lot more thinking than most people are used to. For instance, if you weigh more than 300 pounds you simply cannot run or use a stairmaster machine because you risk permanent knee injury, and you cannot really "walk" on the treadmill either as that doesn't burn enough calories to benefit you. However, you can use an elliptical trainer, stationary bike, and punching bag to kick the heart rate up. A personal heart rate monitor only costs $70 and goes a long way to ensuring the workout intensity remains high.
Losing serious amounts of weight requires the kind of dedication we normally associate with martial arts. A fat person who is seriously losing weight (and I've lost 30 of my 110 extra pounds so far) needs to know as much about fitness as an amateur bodybuilder. It requires money to buy healthier food, gym membership and/or personal training, and equipment, and it also requires enough free time to actually use those fitness resources and shop for food correctly. Finally, it requires a lot of not fucking caring about the world because even your closest family might not notice the first six months and 30 pounds and you'd better stick with it despite all the negative reinforcement around you. The world will always think I suck (because I "chose" to eat crap) until that magic moment I stop looking fat and people start seeing me as a real person again.
Having been in the fat shoes, I have a lot more sympathy for people who have little free time and money and aren't quite introverted enough to handle the social isolation.
Comparing yourselves to minorities who have actually been oppressed is sickening.
Now that's rich: here on Slashdot, the enclave of middle-class white privilege, we're finally told that minorities really are oppressed!
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
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.
Not being a minority did stop women from being treated that way for millenium...
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that fat people are th elast socialy acceptable peer group to abuse. The main reason for this is because it is perceived to be a lack of will power or moral fibre that got them that way in the first place.
I am ALL FOR making fat people feel pressure for being fat. I am fat myself so you might wonder why I say this... when I was growing up in the 1980s, my elementary and middle schools participated in all of those fuzzy feel-good programs like "DARE To Keep Kids Off Drugs!", various sex-education programs, and of course the self-esteem building programs. I think the most damaging thing ever taught to me in school was that "It's OKAY to not conform to the ideals of beauty! Be happy with your own body!" We were given books filled with fat girls and boys and adults and told "There's nothing wrong with being fat! Don't make fun of them for who they ARE!" and all that.You know what? Being fat is not okay. It sucks. It ruins your youth (and I'm sure the rest of your life too). If you are fat, try to change. Don't accept it and feel good about your body. Lose that weight and THEN feel good. That stupid self-esteem program should have said "You can lose weight! You don't have to be trapped under 40 extra pounds of fat!" That's good self-esteem.
Yes, some people have medical problems that cause them to be fat. You know what? I feel sorry for them, just like I feel sorry for people who have lost a limb. If there is no possibility for them to lose weight, then obviously you shouldn't make them feel bad about that. But I don't celebrate it. It's horrible to take that tiny exemption and apply it to all fat people, because you are helping to ruin the lives of people who do have a choice.
I was asked if I'd like a health coach. To help me with my eating or exercise habits. I hadn't found out that it was because of my high BMI until after I met with her (on company time). After explaining that I spend roughly 8 hours a week doing shaolin kung fu, and I bike a total of 14.2 miles to and from work almost every day, I was told that I am not getting enough caloric intake. Strange. But at the same time she was impressed that I looked absolutely nothing like her perception of a 5'8", 200lb man.
I have a small pouch of a stomach and that's about it. And most people don't notice it unless I'm showing off. Which I do from time to time ("feel it kick"). My point is that the BMI can be very flawed. Perhaps America is only fat on paper, but a quick look around tells me otherwise. I scanned my office and see at least60% overweight or obese, and about a sixth of them morbidly so. Every one of these is guilty of being on weight watchers, eating "Lean Pockets", and a few Jenny Craig lunches throughout the day. Yet not losing weight, but increasing their already powerful gravitational field.
America is fat because a lot of us get it all too easy, and if it's not easy, it's not American, apparently. "Just take 'Mataboslim' and sit on your fat ass and watch it melt away!", "Eat whatever you want! Our patented formula of goats.ex and monkey urine will melt those pounds off and prevent your body from holding on to any nutrition whatsoever!"
A little background on me is that I was 240 in high school, and about 38% fat. I lost 70lbs in college when I stopped drinking Pepsi and all other carbonated sugar water. It took two months. My dad thought I was anorexic, but the opposite was the truth. I ate everything I could. And kept it down. It was the extra 1000-1500g of sugar I was no longer consuming.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
"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