Obesity Is Three Times As Deadly For Men Than Women, Says Study (telegraph.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Telegraph: Researchers at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard universities found in the biggest ever study into weight and death that obesity is three times more deadly for men than women, and that being slightly overweight raises the risk of dying early. Telegraph reports: "Obese people can expect to lose three years of life while the average overweight person will die 12 months sooner than they would have if they were a healthy size. Usually fewer than one in five men will die before the age of 70, but that jumps to nearly one in three for the moderately obese, and eight in 10 for the morbidly obese. In contrast around one in 10 women can expect to die early, with obesity raising the risk to one in seven. While obesity raises the risk of early death by just three per cent for women, it is 10 per cent for men, more than three times as much. Around 61 per cent of adults are currently overweight or obese and the average weight of Britons has been steadily increasingly since the 1970s. In 1975 the average Briton had a BMI of 23, which is considered a healthy weight. But today that has risen to 27, with the average person now overweight. It means that since the 1970s, every person in Briton has roughly gained more than three pounds (1.5kg) per decade. Ten types of cancer are linked to excess weight which can also lead to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and a range of other health problems. Researchers compiled data from 10.6 million people who took part in 239 studies between 1970 and 2015, in 32 different countries. The study found an increased risk of premature death for people who were underweight, as well as for people classed as overweight." According to a study published in the Lancet in April, obese people now outnumber the underweight population for perhaps the first time in history.

Comments

Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for this

[Anonymous Coward]

#MaleLivesMatter

so THAT'S the reason

[turkeydance]

there are more fat women than fat men.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[alvinrod]

I don't expect it changes the overall rates that much, simply due to homosexuals being a small minority of the total population, but I remember one report that found that homosexual women were significantly more likely to be overweight as heterosexual women and homosexual men were significantly less likely to be overweight than heterosexual men. I don't know if the researchers had any idea why this occurs, but it's kind of interesting.

Re: so THAT'S the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

...quality of sex? They're literally fucking shit. How can you make that attractive? It's feces, the food you ate 8 hours ago, complete with thousands of species of bacteria, and deadly gas. And some people with defective firmware respond to that. I guess this is foreplay to them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: so THAT'S the reason

[gtall]

Wow, you really have no understanding of sexual attraction. You sound like a typical male wearing waving his male-approved checklist so no one could suspect him of playing for the other team: got hooters, got nice butt, face okay....let's screw. Sexual interest is tied up with a lot more than physical characteristics. The tie up does mean men are more physically in tune during sex, but the initial attraction involves far more.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[buck-yar]

Shouldn't be, women burn fat more effectively than men.

"there is abundant evidence that the proportion of energy derived from fat during exercise is higher in women than in men."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Re: so THAT'S the reason

[Andtalath]

Gay sex is more than just butt-sex.

Frankly, butt-sex is about as common (percentually) between straight couples.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[jellomizer]

Woman have a higher healthy BMI than Men do. But as men move away from physical labor jobs, I expect to see it rise.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Men care more about their partner's appearance than women do.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because most women are fucking lazy and too busy stuffing their faces while men get shit done.

Re:so THAT'S the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because they're fucking ugly. Most men have some standards and don't want to bang a ham beast. The these blobs of shit congregate together in order to convince each other that the rest of the world is somehow wrong for not wanting to procreate with people who are incapable of something as basic as managing their own weight.

Re: so THAT'S the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, I think your argument still smells like shit. I suppose that likely explains why your butthole hurts so bad right now, which is something you need to take up with your partner, not us.

My woman is fat.....

[peterofoz]

Yes, mentioning that your woman is too obese is certainly more hazardous for men.

Re:My woman is fat.....

[inode_buddha]

... just not necessarily in the way that you would think...

Re:My woman is fat.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny.

One odd note in the study is that people live shorter lives if they are obese, and Brits are more obese than ever...yet longevity has increased in the UK...so something doesn't add up...my guess is that it is this study.

Re:My woman is fat.....

[Anonymous Coward]

my guess is that it is this study.

My guess is that it is your reading comprehension.

Re: My woman is fat.....

[slazzy]

That's how I want to go... Well maybe flipped around the other way.

Re:My woman is fat.....

[Anne Thwacks]

If you look at the graphs of weight versus health, for men, after a high risk of death if excessively thin, the risk increases slowly with weight, until they are one kilo past the "obese mark", then it rises rapidly.

for women, after a high risk of death if excessively thin, the risk decreases slowly with weight, until they are one kilo past the "obese mark", then it rises rapidly.

Clearly it is not the weight that kills, but the label obese that kills.

Disclaimer: I routinely suspect medical science is bullshit, based on the fact that the most obvious conclusion from properly analysing the results is that the authors dont have the slightest clue statistics.

Re:My woman is fat.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo momma OTOH,

Re: My woman is fat.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clearly it is not the weight that kills, but the label obese that kills.

Disclaimer: I routinely suspect medical science is bullshit, based on the fact that the most obvious conclusion from properly analysing the results is that the authors dont have the slightest clue statistics."

Both of these statements I agree with, and are VERY well phrased. The majority of people, even those highly educated, sadly do not understand this and the differences between causation and correlation, and make partial or even false conclusions based upon such.

All they "see" is someone 'fat' and can't seem to understand that some of the same damn health problems can just as easily occur with someone who both 'looks' healthy (is "healthy") and is within their average weight range (or 'too-skinny' on the opposite spectrum).

Some of the obvious things can be easily proven with little contest, however some of these other "scientific studies" are almost just blatant assertions, which can be harder to disprove beyond doubt, misleading many in the process.

Re: My woman is fat.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazy acronym Fail:

On The Other Hand, or
On Top Of Her

Which is it? We need to know!

It's the second one, isn't it? No, no, don't even try saying "both" or some other bullshit to get your way out of this one!

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant #MaleLivesFatter

Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

We expect people to work ridiculously long hours at increasingly sedentary jobs and we wonder why people become more overweight. It's incredibly unhealthy for so many reasons. Poor people or those who were once poor are more prone to obesity because the fear of going hungry causes them to overeat when food is available. We have more than enough wealth to ensure that nobody goes hungry, but some people are too greedy to agree to part with any of their money for such purposes. And then we have fucked up people who think it's okay to shame people and mock them for being fat. It's awful to do that to any person, but it's also counterproductive and leads to self esteem issues that can lead to becoming even more obese. Yet there are plenty of people who are twisted enough to think this is okay.

I speak from experience that these are real issues. Having to spend more time sedentary has increased my weight. But I work on short contracts of a few months while I try to find a better job, and I'm always concerned about being out of work and what might happen. I can appreciate how this leads to overeating. Despite the portrayal of overweight people as lazy, I walk several miles a day to get exercise and am making the weight come off. However, I've had a ridiculous amount of people drive past while I'm out walking to get exercise and yell insults at me for my weight. Ironically, they're insulting me for being overweight while I'm actively working to lose weight. WTF?

Obesity is an awful epdemic. We have the ability to reverse the problem, but we can't bring ourselves to do so. WTF?

Re:Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah, it's somebody else's fault (greedy people as you called them.)

It's NOT YOUR MONEY. Stop thinking you're entitled to use it or dictate how it should be used.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I am taking responsibility for my situation through hard work to improve my health and my situation. However, comments like yours deflect responsibility by refusing to accept that your toxic behaviors can and do have negative impacts on others.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the United States. We have this thing called the Constitution that grants power to the federal government to collect taxes. States have their own Constitutions that grant the same power of taxation to them. As a citizen, I get to vote and help elect officials who will have direct authority to control taxation. I also have the right to petition the government and to free speech, which can certainly include matters of taxation. So, yes, I actually do have legal rights that can and do control the spending of your money. So the rhetoric that I can't tell you how to spend your money is false because I most certainly have indirect power to do exactly that. Claiming that I don't have the right to do so is absolutely false and, quite frankly, makes you look stupid and uneducated.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

"... I blame society. Society made me what I am."

Re: Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an individual responsibility, sure, but individual actions don't explain larger trends and shifts. It's not logical that people collectively would directly choose that they want to become unhealthier. An individual might make awful decisions but the overall trends in obesity logically must reflect societal trends. Sure, individuals can certainly move opposite to those trends, but poor societal trends certainly do increase the difficulty with moving in the right direction.

Re:Society is very much to blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the portrayal of overweight people as lazy, I walk several miles a day to get exercise and am making the weight come off.

Keep at it, ignore the jerks.

But for an 18 month hiatus, I have worked full time sitting in front of a computer for 18 years. A couple years after college, I realized that I was gaining weight, but really had no resolve to do anything about it. I hate gyms, dislike jogging and am distracted and unproductive if I am hungry.

Coincidentally, I discovered cycling as a hobby at about that time and this kept me motivated to be active for many years. Eventually I stopped, except for a few miles of commuting a day, but now I walk/hike at least 7 hours a week.

I dropped about 30 lbs. when I picked up cycling, and I have kept it off since.

As far as diet, I was already a vegetarian when I gained the weight. I'm sure it helps, but I believe that finding ways to enjoy being active is key.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[__aaclcg7560]

"... I blame society. Society made me what I am."

Why are some restaurants serving 1,500-calorie plates on their menu?

This is a major reason why I don't eat out anymore. One plate is my entire food budget for day, assuming that the carbs are 150 grams or less. If I do eat out, I get the smallest serving possible or I take home two-thirds of the plate to eat for later meals. Unfortunately, some skinny people think I'm trying to... skinny... shame them for eating an extravagant meal because I'm sticking to my diet goals. They got this weird idea that I should be shoveling four or five plates at a time because BMI says I'm morbidly obese.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[Hognoxious]

Why are some restaurants serving 1,500-calorie plates on their menu?

Because it looks like a better deal compared to a 1,000 calorie plate at 2/3 the price, probably.

And bear in mind that it takes about the same amount of effort to cook it, wash the plate, etc - so it's more profitable for the owner.

Re:Society is very much to blame

[ultranova]

And then we have fucked up people who think it's okay to shame people and mock them for being fat. It's awful to do that to any person, but it's also counterproductive and leads to self esteem issues that can lead to becoming even more obese.

They aren't "fucked up", they're bullies who simply latch into any excusable target since political correctness is making those so rare nowadays. From their point of view harming you is a good thing both because they get their kicks from it and because it keeps you where they can continue kicking you.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[ChrisMaple]

Law and right are only coincidentally related. You may have the legal power to control the spending of somebody else's money, but you do not have the right.

Re:Society is very much to blame

[kilfarsnar]

Blah blah blah, it's somebody else's fault (greedy people as you called them.)

It's NOT YOUR MONEY. Stop thinking you're entitled to use it or dictate how it should be used.

It's not your money either. It belongs to the Federal Reserve; we are just borrowing it.

Re: Society is very much to blame

[kilfarsnar]

Law and right are only coincidentally related. You may have the legal power to control the spending of somebody else's money, but you do not have the right.

In this type of case, that's a distinction without a difference.

Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

The study is using BMI to measure obesty, which is nonsense. The taller someone is the more distorted the BMI measurement gets.

The whole study is worthless.

false

[Anonymous Coward]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple. Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that exercise does more than that, right? Burning calories during exercise does help and it's useful in balancing the caloric budget. There's also a recovery period after strenuous exercise, in which additional calories are burned. Also, exercise also helps to suppress the appetite, so you're actually less likely to overeat after getting exercise.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say hypothetical person exercises 4 hours a day. During that time that person won't even burn 1/3 or their resting caloric usage per day. It helps but one cheesecake or buttered popcorn will set you back days.

I don't know about you but after a long day's hike I want to eat the whole farm.

Re:false

[AthanasiusKircher]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple. Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

This is misguided. I think I understand where you are starting from, but your general conclusion doesn't follow. (Nor does it negate GP's argument that sedentary jobs, etc. may contribute to obesity.)

You're correct that calorie intake is generally much more significant in weight maintenance (or weight loss) than exercise. To lose a pound per week, for example, you'd have to have a calorie deficit of roughly 500 calories/day. That's much easier to achieve through dietary change than through exercise alone. And if you do it through exercise alone, you can negate that deficit simply by having a slice of cake for dessert.

That said, your next step doesn't follow. Sedentary lifestyles can easily contribute to obesity, since effects of no exercise can add up significantly over time. The fundamental problem with "dieting" is that people pack on pounds over years, but then expect to lose them all in a month or something. It may have taken you ten years to put on those 50 pounds, but you just can't lose it in a few weeks... it's impossible.

And the only way to lose weight at a significant rate is generally to reduce intake, as I said.

On the other hand, that does NOT mean there's no effect of exercise on weight maintenance. Take that 50 lbs. gain over 10 years -- that's an excess of approximately 50 calories per day. 50 calories per day is an amount of exercise that can easily be expended by having a job that just requires you to move around a little bit more. But that lack of exercise CAN add up significantly over the years.

All that said, the issue is much more complicated, since weight maintenance has to do with appetite and feedback mechanisms too, which are affected by mental state, physical fitness, level of exercise, and all sort of other things. But the main point is that lack of even a small amount of exercise CAN add up to significant weight shifts over time, at least in theory. So sedentary work lifestyle MAY be a contributing factor to a long-term trend. None of that has anything to do with the fact that diet can have a much larger effect than exercise when one is trying to make RAPID weight changes.

Re: false

[BarbaraHudson]

Exercise also helps curb the sensation of hunger after a while.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

No, exercise alone can't balance an otherwise awful diet. But I estimate with fitness trackers (yes, I know, this isn't especially accurate) that I'm burning a few hundred calories each day from physical activity. It takes a deficit of about 1,500 calories to burn off a pound of fat. If you burn 500 calories a day for six days a week, that's 3,000 extra calories burned. That's about two pounds of fat right there, which certainly is meaningful. Certainly cutting out junk calories is also beneficial, which processed foods and junk foods are full of. I'll just say that losing about eight pounds in about month, clothes fitting better, and having an easier time doing physical activity prove to me that when I'm doing is working.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink some water, you'll discover a lot of the hunger goes away

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who lost nearly half his body weight: Bull. Fucking. Shit.

I sometimes wonder where this kind of shit comes from. "Oh, eating more fat/protein will curb your hunger!" No it fucking wont. Nothing curbs hunger except eating more. If you want to lose weight, get used to being hungry.

Re:false

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple. Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

It is the modern, sedentary lifestyle that causes most of it. With a physical working job, just being moving on your feet, you will easily burn an additional 1500 calories a day.

Easy-access food is less the problem.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

Human body is more complicated then that. Multiple health conditions will make you loose/gain weight in short time with no change in food or activity. The composition bacteria in your guts affects whether you gain or loose weight.

More importantly, you do not eat just because of calories. You need also enough of all the other stuff - protein, vitamins and so on. You need to eat till you get those.

Most importantly, loose weight diet makes you tired and does not feed your brain enough. Meaning that your job performance will go down and nobody can afford that long term. Well, nobody except pretend-you-are-working-while-actually-slacking geeks.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

" None of that has anything to do with the fact that diet can have a much larger effect than exercise when one is trying to make RAPID weight changes."

Then again, you should not try to do RAPID weight changes. As a rule, people who went through rapid change return to their previous weight and those diets are unhealthy anyway.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

Lose, you stupid nigger.

Re:false

[rpavlicek]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple. Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

I'm 46 years old 5'10", 163 pounds. Even though I have a desk job (software engineer), I spend 2-3 hours per day training/lifting/exercising (yes I enjoy it, so lets not go there). My last DXA scan had me at 10.2% body fat.

I take in around 3000 calories a day to maintain my weight (and make small muscle gains) given my current activity. According the calculators, my BMR is around 1630 calories per day. That means ~1400 calories is getting consumed (or lost through digestion).

I may be a single data point, however, exercise makes a huge difference in how many calories I can consume...and use for recovery/muscle growth instead of gaining fat. To be fair, I avoid processed foods whenever possible. Most of my calories are from nuts, fruits, vegetables, meats (chicken/fish) and protein powders (rice/soy/whey).

Re:false

[AmiMoJo]

Exercise is generally recognized as being ineffective for weight loss. The problem is, if you increase the number of calories you burn by exercising your body tends to compensate by burning fewer calories at rest. The other problem is that you need to do an awful lot of exercise to burn off one chocolate bar, which didn't provide you with much nutrition anyway.

Of course exercise has many other health benefits and is highly recommended, it's just not an effective weight loss tool.

Calorie intake management is indeed the key, but it's now understood that the body fights attempts to reduce intake even when it is already severely obese. It goes into conservation mode, burning hundreds of calories less per day which would need an impractical amount of exercise or reduction in intake to offset.

Various ways of fixing this are being looked at. Faecal transplant looks quite promising, as it seems to be able to reset the body's state machine and get it burning a normal 2000-2500 calories a day again.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

No - 3,500 calories is one pound of fat, not 1,500.

The fitness trackers are off by 2x-3x overcompensating. There was just a story on NBC News last night about FitBit/Jawbone and Garmin all showing measurements 200-300% over what people really exerted.

Re: false

[buck-yar]

Not true. Exercise causes muscle cells that are stressed to phosphorylate AKT, which upon feeding activates mTOR and will make you hungrier as insulin starts binding to the muscle cells and activates the PI3K / Akt and Erk MAP kinase pathways.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Exercise will cause the food you eat to go to repair, versus being stored as fat. Doesn't curb hunger at all, other than while you are exercising (due to AMP Kinase phosphorylation). You will certainly be hungrier after a workout than if you hadn't worked out at all.

Re:false

[ChrisMaple]

Gaining weight is the result of absorbing more calories than you burn. Not all food that is consumed is absorbed.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing one longer term aspect of exercise: built muscle. Muscle burns more calories at rest, so if you NEVER exercise and your muscle mass is low, you have less ability to burn calories when you are not working out. If you have a higher muscle mass you will be burning more calories when not moving around.

While the body will try to get you to eat more foods if you have more muscle - it is much easier to eat a "normal size" meal and have your muscle burn it than to have no muscle and try to eat a "tiny meal" to compensate. This is even more true with huge portions at restaurants and otherwise preconceived notions of what a meal should look like + actual physical size of our stomachs, intestines.

To say exercise is "ineffective" at weight loss may be true for losing weight at an unhealthy rate but I know from myself and everyone else in my life: when you go to the gym or work out for a few months in a row you start to lose weight and/or look better (lose fat but put on muscle). Further, I know when I stop going to the gym the opposite happens. I lose muscle and gain fat but generally do not gain much net weight. I do eat more if I have been working out but that doesn't stop the above effects.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Looking at a fitness tracker, I have days where for hours I have zero "steps" because I am in a meeting and maybe take 500 steps at the office on an average day. Then I get home, and in an hour I have 2,000 additional steps just walking around my house. A 30 minute walk is like 4,000 steps.

You don't have to be doing manual labor. You don't even have to be walking all day. But e-mail, phones, "paperless office", etc. have created a situation where there is little reason to leave your desk - even if it is to communicate with someone 10 feet away. Only reason to leave the desk is to eat, drink, piss and shit. The only thing I can do is skip the elevator and take stairs - which I generally do.

Re:false

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Of course exercise has many other health benefits and is highly recommended, it's just not an effective weight loss tool.

I know it's anecdotal, but that has not been my experience. I started doing Judo and Jujitsu about nine years ago, I was about 216 lbs. when I started (I'm 5'9"). I started working out one day a week, then two and finally settled in at three, sometimes four, days a week at the dojo. In a maybe three years time I weighed in for a grappling tournament at 176 lbs. I had not changed my diet one bit.

I have noticed that if I make it to the dojo three times a week, then I lose weight. If I make it twice a week I maintain, and if go once then I slowly add weight. I took a couple month break after my second shoulder injury 20 months ago and have only been making it in once a week due to changing jobs and working more hours than I was. Since then I've gained all of the weight back; I topped out at about 220 and have managed to lose maybe five or six pounds of that by really watching what I eat (sugar in the evening is terrible, it makes me ravenous). It's very frustrating. The only way I seem to lose weight is by working out three days a week.

Re:false

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple.

No, it's not that simple. Recent studies have shown that your gut biome helps to determine if you stay thin or gain weight.

In 2006, Jeffrey Gordon, MD, and his colleagues at the Washington University Medical School in St Louis published a paper in the journal Nature demonstrating that thin mice and obese mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Furthermore, they proved that one particular type of bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity changing the types of bacteria. When the scientists isolated a strain of Firmicutes bacteria from chubby mice and then introduced them into the bacteria-free guts of thin mice raised in a sterile environment, the skinny mice fattened up in just 10 to 14 days.

Why You Can't Lose Weight

Re:false

[ndogg]

Not to mention that if you're exercising, you're probably not eating something, like a snack. So many people have little snacks here and there, and that adds up.

Re:false

[kilfarsnar]

People are overweight because they consume more calories than they burn. It is that simple. Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

How did this get modded Insightful? Almost no amount of exercise will change the amount of calories burned? That's ridiculous.

Re: false

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, just wrong. You are clueless. If 'a calorie is a calorie' try living on just sugar.

Re: false

[kilfarsnar]

Let's say hypothetical person exercises 4 hours a day. During that time that person won't even burn 1/3 or their resting caloric usage per day. It helps but one cheesecake or buttered popcorn will set you back days.

But they're burning whatever they burn during those 4 hours of exercise in addition to the resting burn rate they are doing all day. So if they burn 1/3 of their resting rate, they are increasing their caloric burn by 33%. That seems significant.

Re:false

[AmiMoJo]

I used to do judo as well, and found it had no real effect on my weight. If anything I gained a bit due to increased muscle mass.

Re:false

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost no amount of exercise will change that. Your body will burn more calories doing nothing all day than you running a mile. Exercise will improve your health but it's affect on your weight are minimal.

You're misunderstanding the science. This is common with this topic.

A measure of how many calories are burned in the laboratory while exercising tells you NOTHING about the total effects of that exercise. It's like measuring the heat put out by an engine during rush hour, and neglecting the heat put out by leaving the engine on (at a lower speed) during the rest of the day.

What actually happens - and has been shown, repeatedly - is that exercise raises the metabolism for many hours afterwords. This wasn't understood in the earlier studies, so they didn't measure metabolism for long enough.

In other words, your body will burn far more calories in a day when you run a mile that day - above and beyond the calories burned during the actual running - then it will if you do absolutely nothing for the whole day.

As you build muscle mass, it gets even better, since that also raises metabolism.

There's a lot more involved, of course, in determining weight/body fat percentage, but there's no doubt that exercise is extremely important to the outcome (and to a generally healthy life). Where most people fail is either a) they overdo things, leading to injury, or b) they fail to be persistent. Worse, often those that get injured fail to find other ways to exercise.

Re: false

[BarbaraHudson]

It helps curb the "I'm bored, going to hit the fridge" hunger, which isn't really hunger, just a habit. Also, if you're really tired, you're too tired to eat. If you never got to that stage, you weren't doing it hard enough.

Re: false

[BarbaraHudson]

Try going to the point where all you can do is climb into bed and sleep, instead of eating. You won't be hungry.

Life expectancy is not how to motivate people

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to be reminded of the immediate returns.

Losing weight makes every day you are a live worth a lot more because everything is easier and feel better all the time. Living 1-4 years more hardly makes any difference.

How 'bout government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me a morbidly obese bureaucracy is at imminent risk of death.

All right!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Here on Slashdot, it's become a meme for people to routinely complain how the site's focus isn't "News for Nerds" any more.

Well if this doesn't qualify, NOTHING does!

Re:All right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Being "nerd" has become quite boring. There is nothing left but batman movies, sex and politics. When was the last time you read some revolutionary technology (being sold, not announced the possibility of it might happen someday). Even new developments are rehashes from things people were doing, sometimes decades or even centuries earlier.

Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity, along with the consumption of heavily processed foods. It's no wonder that the nations with the highest meat consumption have the highest rates of lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

A tiny sample of the tens of thousands of papers stemming from clinical studies of meat's role in disease
Non-industry funded Research

Meat consumption is associated with obesity and central obesity among US adults
International Journal of Obesity (2009) 33, 621–628; doi:10.1038/ijo.2009.45; published online 24 March 2009
http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v33/n6/abs/ijo200945a.html

DIET, OBESITY, AND RISK OF FATAL PROSTATE CANCER
Am. J. Epidemiol. (1984) 120 (2): 244-250. 1.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/120/2/244.short

Diet and body mass index in 38000 EPIC-Oxford meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans
International Journal of Obesity (2003) 27, 728–734. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802300
http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v27/n6/abs/0802300a.html

Prevalence of obesity is low in people who do not eat meat.
Key T, Davey G. BMJ: British Medical Journal. 1996;313(7060):816-817.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352221/

Meat consumption and prospective weight change in participants of the EPIC-PANACEA study.
Vergnaud AC1, Norat T, Romaguera D, Mouw T, May AM, Travier N, Luan J, Wareham N, Slimani N, Rinaldi S, Couto E, Clavel-Chapelon F, Boutron-Ruault MC, Cottet V, Palli D, Agnoli C, Panico S, Tumino R, Vineis P, Agudo A, Rodriguez L, Sanchez MJ, Amiano P, Barricarte A, Huerta JM, Key TJ, Spencer EA, Bueno-de-Mesquita B, Büchner FL, Orfanos P, Naska A, Trichopoulou A, Rohrmann S, Hermann S, Boeing H, Buijsse B, Johansson I, Hellstrom V, Manjer J, Wirfält E, Jakobsen MU, Overvad K, Tjonneland A, Halkjaer J, Lund E, Braaten T, Engeset D, Odysseos A, Riboli E, Peeters PH.
Am J Clin Nutr August 2010. vol. 92 no. 2 398-407
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/92/2/398.short

Type of Vegetarian Diet, Body Weight, and Prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes
Serena Tonstad, Terry Butler, Ru Yan, Gary E. Fraser. Diabetes Care May 2009, 32 (5) 791-796; DOI: 10.2337/dc08-1886
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/5/791.short

Re:Meat is the cause

[BradMajors]

Epidemiological studies show that populations with low meat consumption have lower life expectancy.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

They lose the will to live when they can't get a decent steak.

Re:Meat is the cause

[antek9]

I call bullshit on this. You can't get fat eating meat (alone), you get fat by eating the pasta, potatoes, corn, bread, and rice that come with it. Eat good meat and eggs, and be lean and mean.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that you can't cite any mainstream journals. it's amazing what lengths vegies will go to in their insistence that meat is bad. At the very least stick to arguments where the evidence is good.

Re: Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen solid evidence that meat is actually that bad. Sure, ridiculous amounts if proteins and fats aren't good. But it seems like there's a lot more evidence that certain types of carbs are actually quite a bit worse. If you want to lose weight, it's probably much more beneficial to cut back on carbs, especially simple sugars. Vegetables certainly have a place I'm a healthy diet, but it's also probably a good idea to cut carbs. There are health risks with just about anything you do, so it's really more important to keep the overall level of risk low. Running marathons has been linked to certain heart conditions, so does that mean it's worth giving up distance running? The answer, of course, is no because the overall health benefits geary outweigh the risks. Even if you can find some risks associated with eating meat, it doesn't mean that those risks outweigh the health benefits. It's probably healthier to get more calories from fats and proteins than from carbs.

Re:Meat is the cause

[AthanasiusKircher]

When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death (obesity, cancer, heart disease, and pretty diseases of inflammation) drop. To anyone with a scientific mind, modern nutritional-science's data should pretty much indict animal based foods as the direct cause of obesity,

Before I reply further, I should note that I am NOT a major carnivore. I enjoy a good steak (sometimes a large one), but I actually only eat meat in maybe a couple meals each week. I've frequently gone several weeks without eating meat -- I just prefer to eat quality meat once in a while, rather than eating some industrial junk from a "tube" of hamburger every day.

So I have no strong reason to defend meat consumption, but I have been confronted with the vegetarian and vegan arguments from various people over the years, and I've spent a lot of time reading about the matter. For every study you cite, I could cite another that contradicts or qualifies the findings.

The problem with "modern nutritional science" is that it's trying to break down very complex systems and isolate a single variable within a huge set of possible human situations. Thus, there are literally hundreds of possible confounding factors that make the conclusions of your studies suspect.

Just for one major issue -- people who are vegetarian or vegan (at least in countries that don't have large religious populations that adhere to these) are disproportionately likely to have better lifestyles. They tend to be wealthier people who tend to exercise more and pay attention to what they eat and make deliberate choices not only to avoid meat but to avoid junk food in general, whereas the "default" person who eats meat in most modern societies probably also eats a lot of junk too.

along with the consumption of heavily processed foods.

And here you get at just one of the many possible confounding factors. Low fiber intake has also shown to be correlated with higher obesity, and that tends to be correlated with meat consumption. What if we did a study of people in the same socioeconomic status who shopped at similar supermarkets (often the pricier nicer ones with better quality stuff for the vegans) and controlled for the level of "processed food" (which itself isn't really the problem as much as additives like excess added sugar), level of fiber consumption, etc., etc.

If you actually compared "apples to apples" in terms of people and diets, just isolating meat consumption, would you see such an effect on obesity? I don't know, but I'd bet LOTS of money that if there is an effect, it's a LOT smaller than most of these studies claim. Maybe meat consumption is itself a contributing factor to obesity problems, but it's far from the only one... and I'm not convinced yet from studies that it's even a major one.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you explain what good meat is? As far as I can tell, the types of meat I prefer (bacon and ham) aren't considered good meat and I don't understand the whys.

Re:Meat is the cause

[antek9]

Good meat is whatever meat is good enough for you. I like my bacon, too, but obviously there is a lot of good things to be said about grass-fed, and antibiotics-free meat. Depending on where you live, this kind of meat might qualify as 'organic', or 'bio', but I don't care about labels.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently discovered bacon and eggs. I used to eat a mostly vegetarian diet. In the morning I would always eat a bagel or sometimes a couple pieces of toast. By noon I was starving. Then someone gave me some free bacon, so I cooked it up in the morning with an egg. I didn't think about food again for almost twelve hours.

That was months ago and I've stuck to the bacon and eggs for breakfast and still full all day. I don't measure, but I think I'm losing weight. I also know some really fat (as well as skinny) vegetarians.

Re:Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

Epidemiological studies show that populations with low meat consumption have lower life expectancy.

Cite a non-industry sponsored clinical study showing this in a peer reviewed journal. And find one that's adjusted for income. I'll save you time--you won't.

Re:Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

So I have no strong reason to defend meat consumption, but I have been confronted with the vegetarian and vegan arguments from various people over the years, and I've spent a lot of time reading about the matter. For every study you cite, I could cite another that contradicts or qualifies the findings.

So do it. Cite non-industry funded research in peer reviewed journals to contradict me. Why just say you can?

The problem with "modern nutritional science" is that it's trying to break down very complex systems and isolate a single variable within a huge set of possible human situations. Thus, there are literally hundreds of possible confounding factors that make the conclusions of your studies suspect.

If you actually compared "apples to apples" in terms of people and diets, just isolating meat consumption, would you see such an effect on obesity? I don't know, but I'd bet LOTS of money that if there is an effect, it's a LOT smaller than most of these studies claim. Maybe meat consumption is itself a contributing factor to obesity problems, but it's far from the only one... and I'm not convinced yet from studies that it's even a major one.

This is the power of modern nutrition studies that are based on large populations, across long time spans. They are income adjusted, lifestyle adjusted, and fine tuned to the point that you can compare apples to apples. The Adventist Study is a prime example of this, since you have a relatively cohesive group with similar lifestyles, but with varying degrees of meat consumption from lacto/ovo/fish vegetarians all the way to pure vegans. They have actually quantified the risk factor of adding every individual "meat" product to a diet, and vegans come in with the lowest heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.

Below are a handful more studies with lifestyle and income adjustments that all suggest that meat/dairy is the primary cause of the major diseases we are discussing. Even when you adjust to include "junk-food vegans", you see that they come out ahead. It's not just processed foods that are to blame, although an increased consumption of processed foods is linked to elevated heart disease in all populations.

M L McCullough. Diet patterns and mortality: common threads and consistent results. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):795-6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24717365

M A Martinez-Gonzalez, A Sanchez-Tainta, D Corella, J Salas-Salvado, E Ros, F Aros, E Gomez-Gracia, M Fiol, R M Lamuela-Raventos, H Schroder, J Lapetra, L Serra-Majem, X Pinto, V Ruiz-Gutierrez, Ramon Estruch for the PREDIMED Group. A provegetarian food pattern and reduction in total mortality in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 May 28;100(Supplement 1):320S-328S.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24871477

J Reedy, S M Krebs-Smith, P E Miller, A D Liese, L L Kahle, Y Park, A F Subar. Higher diet quality is associated with decreased risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality among older adults. J Nutr. 2014 Jun;144(6):881-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572039

G E Fraser, D J Shavlik. Ten years of life: Is it a matter of choice? Arch Intern Med. 2001 Jul 9;161(13):1645-52.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11434797

Thousands of peer-reviewed papers based on the large-scale studies below support the treating of lifestyle diseases by reducing or eliminating animal product consumption, paired with an increased consumption of whole plant-based foods. These are clinically valid paths to eliminating the diseases, which are most often more effective than prescription drugs, which are geared toward relieving symptoms (e.g. statins) but not the underlying causes of disease.
Large scale, long-term studies:
PREDIMED Studies: http://www.predimed.es/publica...

Re:Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

"Meat intake may be related to weight gain because of its high energy and fat content."
from
Meat consumption and prospective weight change in participants of the EPIC-PANACEA study.
Vergnaud AC1, Norat T, Romaguera D, Mouw T, May AM, Travier N, Luan J, Wareham N, Slimani N, Rinaldi S, Couto E, Clavel-Chapelon F, Boutron-Ruault MC, Cottet V, Palli D, Agnoli C, Panico S, Tumino R, Vineis P, Agudo A, Rodriguez L, Sanchez MJ, Amiano P, Barricarte A, Huerta JM, Key TJ, Spencer EA, Bueno-de-Mesquita B, Büchner FL, Orfanos P, Naska A, Trichopoulou A, Rohrmann S, Hermann S, Boeing H, Buijsse B, Johansson I, Hellstrom V, Manjer J, Wirfält E, Jakobsen MU, Overvad K, Tjonneland A, Halkjaer J, Lund E, Braaten T, Engeset D, Odysseos A, Riboli E, Peeters PH.
Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Aug;92(2):398-407. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.28713. Epub 2010 Jun 30.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20592131?dopt=Abstract

Re: Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

If you don't believe in science, then perhaps the evidence isn't very strong. For everyone else, start your investigation here:

Diet Patterns and Mortality: Common Threads and Consistent Results
Marjorie L. McCullough
Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA
J. Nutr. June 1, 2014. vol. 144 no. 6 795-796
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/144/6/795.long

Re:Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

All of my handful of references above are peer-reviewed and constitute the state of the art of nutritional science.
Nature isn't "mainstream" enough? Getting an article published in Nature is considered to be one of the highlights of a scientists career.

BJM (British Medical Journal) is the premier nutritional science peer-reviewed journal in Europe.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition focuses on major unbiased clinical studies, and is also peer reviewed.

The American Diabetes Assocation should be taken very seriously, since they actually receive funding from big-ag itself. Going so far as to attack meat is attacking the very hand that feeds them. That's how seriously they take it.

The International Journal of Obesity is peer-reviewed, and seems to be a good source considering we are discussing obesity.

The American Journal of Epidemiology is peer reviewed and has an impact factor of 12 out of 172. That's pretty freaking good if you're a publishing scientist, but it is very hard to get a paper accepted since it is nearly the top of the field.

Re: Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because a few studies say something is statistically significant doesn't mean it's credible.

If you look at long term data and control for certain variables, you can find a statistically significant correlation between vaccines and autism. Of course, a scatter plot of the data doesn't look like there's a correlation at all. Furthermore, there's no significant correlation in the data without controlling for certain variables.

The problem is that you can choose which variables to control for, and researchers can try enough combinations to get a statistically significant result. Typical statistical methods can be abused to create a statistically significant result.

If I generate enough random samples and calculate correlation coefficients, I'll occasionally find a large correlation. If there are a lot of variables that can be controlled for, especially if there are multiple ways to control for those variables, there are a lot of combinations to try, which could potentially produce a statistically significant result. Furthermore, when you're working with large data sets, it's easier to get small p-values when comparing the same variables.

These studies cannot simply be accepted at face value. You need to look at the methods and actual data to decide if the findings are meaningful. Just because you cite a bunch of studies doesn't mean they're credible. Some journals, especially those that are more selective, have banned articles that rely solely on some statistical methods like p-values. It adds to why I'm wary of these articles.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

For that matter, the OP contradicts earlier studies that showed overweight (but not obese) people live longer than normal weight. This matches with the obesity paradox, where obese people are more likely to have problems, but when they do, they are more likely to survive than a normal weight person with the same problem.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Vegan Cyclist]

Low fiber intake has also shown to be correlated with higher obesity, and that tends to be correlated with meat consumption. What if we did a study of people in the same socioeconomic status who shopped at similar supermarkets (often the pricier nicer ones with better quality stuff for the vegans) and controlled for the level of "processed food" (which itself isn't really the problem as much as additives like excess added sugar), level of fiber consumption, etc., etc.

Given that meat has zero fiber, this 'correlation' is simply the outcome of the scenario. I just can't picture someone who eats a high amount of meat AND high amount of fiber - this type of diet is unheard of. It's like saying fitness is correlated with physical activity...err, yeah. There aren't many (any?) people who are morbidly obese and exceptional endurance athletes (although a better analogy is inactive person who's an exceptional endurance athlete). The two don't mix. The studies are pretty consistent: as animal protein consumption decreases, so do rates of degenerative diseases. I'm not gonna say 'you have to eat zero meat to be healthy', if someone ate as a whole-food vegan all year and had one egg, it's not going to have a negative impact on their health...but scale it up to a daily basis, where it substitutes more nutritious foods with fiber, and pretty consistently health issues begin to creep in.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Nutrition arguments are always annoying. Blah, blah, blah, here's 50 studies showing eating more meats and less grains is best. Blah, blah, blah, here's 50 studies showing eating more grain and less meats is best. Why does everyone ignore what's common with all of the studies? Eat more veggies! It's always if you 'eat more meats and veggies' or 'eat more grains and veggies'. Stop ignoring the "and veggies" side note. People don't eat enough vegetables.

Re:Meat is the cause

[nowsharing]

For that matter, the OP contradicts earlier studies that showed overweight (but not obese) people live longer than normal weight. This matches with the obesity paradox, where obese people are more likely to have problems, but when they do, they are more likely to survive than a normal weight person with the same problem.

For that matter, the OP contradicts earlier studies that showed overweight (but not obese) people live longer than normal weight. This matches with the obesity paradox, where obese people are more likely to have problems, but when they do, they are more likely to survive than a normal weight person with the same problem.

It's hard to respond directly to this claim, since you only cite heresay and not any sort of clinical studies with equally adjusted population controls. However, we are discussing obesity and not simply being "overweight". If you are simply stating that a slightly above normal BMI doesn't equate to higher overall mortality, then you are relatively correct since this class would fall below class 1 and higher obesity. The majority of studies however find a positive correlation between any increases in BMI (above the mean), and overall mortality.

Association of All-Cause Mortality With Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Katherine M. Flegal, PhD; Brian K. Kit, MD; Heather Orpana, PhD; Barry I. Graubard, PhD
JAMA. 2013;309(1):71-82. doi:10.1001/jama.2012.113905.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1555137+

Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality from Cancer in a Prospectively Studied Cohort of U.S. Adults
Eugenia E. Calle, Ph.D., Carmen Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., Kimberly Walker-Thurmond, B.A., and Michael J. Thun, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2003; 348:1625-1638April 24, 2003DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa021423
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021423

Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old
Kenneth F. Adams, Ph.D., Arthur Schatzkin, M.D., Tamara B. Harris, M.D., Victor Kipnis, Ph.D., Traci Mouw, M.P.H., Rachel Ballard-Barbash, M.D., Albert Hollenbeck, Ph.D., and Michael F. Leitzmann, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2006; 355:763-778August 24, 2006DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa055643
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa055643#t=article

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

It's due to the chemicals used to cure the meat, dumbass.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

You really should stick to the whole foods part of your sermon and I say this as a 30+ year vegetarian.

As a long time vegetarian I know plenty of obese vegetarians including myself. I call us "the junk food vegetarians" and it's easier to be one almost by the day. There were a ton of foods that were off the menu back when I became vegetarian because of animal products that are vegetarian and sometimes even vegan safe today. Whole foods is the real area that the body starts to get back to it's normal metabolic process.

While I'd like to wave the banner of vegetarianism as the linchpin to all things healthy, it's simply not true. Vegetarianism certainly has a ton of virtues over meat eating but vegetarian!=healthy diet. It can and it should but it doesn't.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

For every study you cite, I could cite another that contradicts or qualifies the findings.

And that's it, exactly.

Statistical research is just that, statistical research.
The outcome is valid only for people who themselves conform to the statistical average.
That means if you don't have one breast and one testicle, IGNORE all that "this study has proven this" and "that study has proven that" hogwash.

They're all just proving what they set out to prove, and that goes for both sides, the "no animal" fanatiots just as well as the "industry sponsored research".

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what you're saying is I can eat as much bread as I want? Like, a couples of loaves a day, and I won't get fat, and I'll be healthy?

I call bullshit.

Re:Meat is the cause

[BatesMethod]

Is there any amount of scientific evidence that could persuade you to change your opinion?

Did you know that animal agriculture is also a large contributor to the greenhouse gas problem? Not only because of the animals' direct effects, but also the tremendous amounts of food they consume, rain forests cleared to grow feed crops, etc. Additionally, it uses significant amounts of fresh water.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Again? This is a copy-paste job from earlier this week I refuted and you ignored. Why should anyone converse with you when you ignore anything you don't like. PREDIMED has been refuted dozens of times. Adventist studies are just as unbiased and for the same reasons as ISIS. EPIC was partially funded by a cultural initiative to advance French and Mediterranean cuisine. Your "China Studies" is just a fucking google search which refute what you say within the top three results.

So do it. Cite non-industry funded research in peer reviewed journals to contradict me. Why just say you can?

Indeed. Who do you work for?

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

And over half of your sources have been criticized within the last two years for publishing falsified data or unrepeatable results. Peer review just means there is no problems with the methodology. It says nothing about validity.

This shows that you are an armchair academic instead of an actual one.

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I can be a vegetarian on a steady diet of poutine (so long as we're talking fake gravy and vegetable oil fryer), chips/cheesies, and almost all the candy I want (just need to watch out for gummies). Don't pass on the ice cream for dessert, I'll take three scoops!

Re:Meat is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

When humans stop eating meat and switch to whole-food plant based diets, the rates of all leading causes of death drop

A highly misleading statement. Take a research design class, and learn what it means when one says "correlation is not causation". You are jumping to conclusions that fit your preconceived notions of how the world should work.

Some people eat too much meat, particularly in the USA, and this can create the illusion that eating meat is a problem, an illusion fostered by misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the science, combined with bad research. But many cultures eat substantial amounts of meat and are healthier than the average subject of the studies you cite. You might look at the work of Loren Cordain, a professor of evolutionary nutrition at Colorado State University at Fort Collins. Or read up on the Inuit Paradox. Or look at the work of John Speth, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan.

In general, hunter-gatherers tend to eat more animal protein than we do in our standard Western diet (there are often mechanisms in these cultures to manage the balance between animal protein and other elements in the diet) and still have healthy lifestyles.

The Mediterranean Diet is another example of a diet that is very healthy, without being vegetarian.

As with math, any counter-example disproves a thesis, and there are MANY counter-examples in the literature. Animal protein in itself is not the problem.

It might not be a bad idea for excessive meat eaters to go vegetarian for a while, to counter-balance all the years of going the other way, but going vegetarian is in no sense required to get those health benefits - especially over the long term - and NO competent scientist would claim otherwise.

There are old guys and there are fat guys

[zerofoo]

But there aren't many old, fat guys.

Re:There are old guys and there are fat guys

[BarbaraHudson]

There are enough of them that at this rate, the EU wouldn't have to worry about #Brexit, the British Isles would have sunk under all that extra weight in a few more decades anyway.

Re:There are old guys and there are fat guys

[freeze128]

Vincent, is that you?

Gender Equality

[Anonymous Coward]

So, women want equality with men, but they don't play by the rules? That's fair.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

No no... #MaleLivesShorter

It's all good though. It means more chicks for the svelte man.

Fat people consume too much, of everything, especially airline seats. And they put us all at risk when they push the airplane above maximum takeoff weight and an engine quits. I think they should do like cargo, and charge by the pound and by girth. If you need two or three seats, you should have to pay full fare for each.

one question

[ihtoit]

where is "Briton"?

Re:one question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not where, who.

Re:one question

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you did not read the summary.

It means that since the 1970s, every person in Briton has roughly gained more than three pounds (1.5kg) per decade.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Obesity Is Three Times As Deadly For Men Than Women, Says Study

This must be that "Male Privilege" I keep hearing about.

Contrary to popular belief weight not a choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of evidence that it's almost impossible for obese people to modify their weight, but that evidence is ignored because it doesn't support selling weight loss pills, potions, surgery, gym equipment, gym membership.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3oI104STzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAWdHYSrh7M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1hbPXooB1U
https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work?language=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn0Ygp7pMbA
https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/do-95-of-dieters-really-fail/
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/the-diet-myth-microbes-are-the-secret-to-staying-thin-20160223-gn1ypc.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-04/faulty-gene-may-explain-why-labradors-are-food-obsessed/7378828
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/scientists-find-the-hunger-gene-making-labradors-crazy-about-food/news-story/06416bdb5b6c090f29d944590057e3dd
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/07/obesity-gene-linked-hunger-hormone
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415002615
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716180913.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-weight-on-a-diet.html?_r=0
https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/05/09/031249/neuroscience-explains-why-dieters-rarely-lose-weight
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11892-010-0153-z/fulltext.html

Just three years?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Obese people can expect to lose three years of life

On one hand, live your life eating what you want, when you want, as much as you want. On the other have to add physical exercise to your already loaded work / family routine, in addition to having to deprive yourself of delicious food.

I'm glad I took the decision of going full fatso. Thank you science!

Re:Just three years?

[Ol Olsoc]

>On the other have to add physical exercise to your already loaded work / family routine, in addition to having to deprive yourself of delicious food

Ack! Noo! you said the D word! Glad to see you stepped back from that abyss. When I was a child, My family were proto-foodies before it was even a thing. Fresh food direct from the farm when at all possible, Lettuce from the garden so fresh and tasty, you could enjoy it with only a bit of vinegar, a dash of oil and some satl and fresh ground pepper. Sometimes with fiddlehead ferns on top. Charcuterie made with real meats - nothing like a smoked sausage made from prime pork butt and not floor sweepings. Venison bologna that could turn Bambi into a cannibal. Fresh veggies canned or frozen at their peak. My better half just made Black Raspberry jam from berries I picked on Tuesday. We ate some today on fresh baked Sourdough bread. Whoa! Next week I'll be starting a double batch of homemade smoked bacon, half my regular dry rubbed brown sugar cure, and the other with Chipotle peppers added to the dry rub. Cut thick and fried, and you have heaven on a plate.

Oops - sorry - I just figured out I'm doing food pr0n here.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fat as fuck and I 100% approve of this. Being fat is a choice. Own it AND pay for it, I say.

life expectancy of a house fly.

[PopeRatzo]

I know this is true because my wife told me she'll kill me if I get fat.

smart woman; she's a keeper

[Anonymous Coward]

My fiance and I have a deal that we'll part ways when either one of us gets fat

I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

Usually fewer than one in five men will die before the age of 70, but that jumps to nearly one in three for the moderately obese, and eight in 10 for the morbidly obese.

I'm 47-YO, 5'-11" and 350 pounds (see pic link below). According to BMI and the experts on Slashdot, I'm morbidly obese and should have dropped dead three years ago.

http://www.cdreimer.com/images/cdreimer_350.jpg

Except for one small problem: I don't believe that bullshit.

Why? Because I take care of myself. I eat a 150g carbs/1,500-calorie diet, I walk 20 minutes daily and work out at the gym on weekends. I also maintain a positive attitude and don't allow fat shamers to bully me. I'll probably live longer than my hard-drinking, chain-smoking relatives who are dropping like flies these days. Although I haven't been to a doctor in 15 years, I'm in better health today than I ever was before.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Hasaf]

I am 49, 5'6" and 200 pounds. Today I cycled 45 miles and spent over half an hour in heart zone 5. Further, I do that several times a week. Accorw=ding to my doctor, other than the weight, my numbers are great.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Ol Olsoc]

\

I'm 47-YO, 5'-11" and 350 pounds (see pic link below). According to BMI and the experts on Slashdot, I'm morbidly obese and should have dropped dead three years ago.

Similar here, although I tip the scales around a hundred less. I cannot float, because of my density, but still considered morbid. But you can only get so much exercise, and waddya do when its unhealthy to get rid of any more body fat. At my Ice hockey "thinnest" I was 225, playing three games a week. And it's simply not possible to get that much exercise as you age.

Oh well, no one fat shames me in person for some reason.

But my good man,you appear to know that life isn't a game where the idea is to stretch out the years as much as possible, leaving a beautiful and fit corpse at the end, after you've given all of your estate to the nursing home you are in.

Life is to enjoy, to laugh and love, and is too short to eat like a rabbit. As long as you are content, its all good. Even if you live a few years less, the enjoyment of not having your number one goal to live as long as possible, but to be happy, will be well worth it.

Live long and prosper.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[quantaman]

Usually fewer than one in five men will die before the age of 70, but that jumps to nearly one in three for the moderately obese, and eight in 10 for the morbidly obese.

I'm 47-YO, 5'-11" and 350 pounds (see pic link below). According to BMI and the experts on Slashdot, I'm morbidly obese and should have dropped dead three years ago.

http://www.cdreimer.com/images/cdreimer_350.jpg

You're arguing against a bit of a strawman. No one claims that BMI is a perfect indicator of health for everyone, it's just a decent estimator for people with average body composition. You look to have an unusually high percentage of muscle so BMI doesn't really apply to you.

Why? Because I take care of myself. I eat a 150g carbs/1,500-calorie diet, I walk 20 minutes daily and work out at the gym on weekends.

Are you sure you're calculating that correctly? 1500 per day is extremely low for a woman, just to maintain an average sedentary male physique you're looking at 2350.

I also maintain a positive attitude and don't allow fat shamers to bully me. I'll probably live longer than my hard-drinking, chain-smoking relatives who are dropping like flies these days. Although I haven't been to a doctor in 15 years, I'm in better health today than I ever was before.

You're not obese but you still have a decent amount of body fat, just feeling healthy doesn't mean you don't have undiagnosed health problems. Anyone your age should go once in a while just to ensure there aren't any issues, and if those calorie numbers are accurate there's definitely something weird going on.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Ol Olsoc]

I am 49, 5'6" and 200 pounds. Today I cycled 45 miles and spent over half an hour in heart zone 5. Further, I do that several times a week. Accorw=ding to my doctor, other than the weight, my numbers are great.

I'd assume from that, your BMI is pretty low?

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Anonymous Coward]

That photo is clearly shows someone sucking in the gut. It doesn't hide the big tits and rolls of fat on the chin. This isn't just a bit of a spare tyre - it's obesity. You might feel that you're in reasonable shape, but you'd be a lot better off 100 pounds lighter. You're not yet 50, and you will find it increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy weight as you get older. You are already making your heart work a lot harder, as well as putting a much higher load on your joints. Shame isn't a good motivator, and if you pay attention to bullies at your age... well. Mobility = quality of life when you get old. Do it for yourself, not for others. But don't bullshit yourself. Lot's of men don't go to the doctor for years - but it's not a sign of overall health. It's because you probably know what the Doctor is going to tell you.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[mykepredko]

If you haven't been to a doctor in 15 years - how do you know you are "in better health today than I ever was before"?

I'm very suspicious about the claim that you are maintaining 350lbs on a 1,500 calorie a day diet. With any kind of exercise, you should be losing weight, not maintaining it. Maybe if you were eating 1,500 calories a meal, three times a day you would be maintaining that weight.

I'm happy you feel good - but at 350lbs and not losing weight on what should be minimal caloric input, I suspect that you should be seriously thinking about swallowing a bit of humble pie and going for a much delayed doctor's appointment.

After all, you don't want those relatives of yours spilling drinks and cigarette ashes into your coffin.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 186 cm tall, 82 kg 52 year old. I was fit - sport several times a week and walking/running about 50km a week, low cholesterol, moderate blood pressure. I am currently recovering from double cardiac bypass surgery about three months ago.

I thought I was being careful with my diet and exercise given a strong family history of heart disease. I guess not careful enough.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi yeah sounds like you did everthing "right". In your case the cause is not related to your lifestyle - i.e. think of how many people who have never exercised and eaten like crap every day and who are much older without problems. And also the fact that studies are showing that you get most of the disease-related benefits of exercise by just doing a little bit a few times a week, then the effect tapers out. It is not necessary to do extensive training apparently. Maybe even counter-productive above a certain limits, but I wouldn't think that was the problem in your case either.

In your case the heart problems are likely due to the genetics you mention.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Except for one small problem: I don't believe that bullshit.

What bullshit?

Morbidly obese doesn't mean "you're guaranteed to drop dead", much like smoking 60 fags a day doesn't mean you're guaranteed to drop dead. Excess weight is, however, causally correlated with a wide variety of different health problems. If you don't believe that then you are simply engaging in denialism.

You might have won the genetic lottery. It happens. Not everyone gets all or any of the health problems from being very overweight. The effects for you might simply be limited to the somewhat mechanical ones of making it less easy to get around and having a heavier load on your joints so more wear when you do get around.

Why? Because I take care of myself. I eat a 150g carbs/1,500-calorie diet,

If you are that overweight on 1,500 calories a day you might well have an undiagnosed thyroid problem. That's an extremely low intake for an adult male. A somewhat distant family member of mine had hypothyroidism undiagnosed for about 20 years. He was obese, ate about the same as you (he tried really hard to lose the weight) and could only reliably lose weight on about 1000 calories per day. Most of the other symptoms are vague and non specific and can easily be attributed to other things (and you're not guaranteed to get any or all of them).

and don't allow fat shamers to bully me.

That's good, fat shaming is a dick move.

However, just because it's a dick move, doesn't make the health risks any less real.

Although I haven't been to a doctor in 15 years, I'm in better health today than I ever was before.

So how do you know?

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

I'd assume from that, your BMI is pretty low?

No, it would be high. BMI is just a function of weight and height and nothing else. It's a good predictor of whether or not you're obese (95% accurate for men, 99% accurate for women). It's particularly useful because it relies on one readily measured variable (weight) and unlike waist measurement (which is actually a better predictor when measured accurately), it's much harder to measure it wrong.

But it's only a predictor. Your status of overweight or not is conditionally independent of BMI given body fat percentage.

It's also not a predictor of health effects except that it's a predictor of overweightness and that is a predictor of health effects. IOW if you have a high BMI, you are more likely to be overweight and in turn more likely to suffer health effects as a result. If you do population averages, people with high BMI suffer more health effects on average.

Even if you are overweight, you might be one of the lucky people who don't suffer much by the way of ill effects from it.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

That photo is clearly shows someone sucking in the gut. It doesn't hide the big tits and rolls of fat on the chin.

I'm not sucking in my gut. I have broad shoulders and a narrow waist. I'm not wearing a weight-lifting belt either.

You might feel that you're in reasonable shape, but you'd be a lot better off 100 pounds lighter.

My average used to be 325 pounds from riding my bike 20 miles per day. When I stopped doing that and started lifting weights at the gym, my weight went to 400 pounds. Since finding t-shirts in 4XL was a PITA, I stopped lifting weights in favor cardio and my weight dropped to 350 pounds. That's my weight for the last 10+ years.

You are already making your heart work a lot harder, as well as putting a much higher load on your joints.

I've been 300+ pounds since I was ten years old. My last bout of hypertension was in my teen years before I started riding my bike 20 miles per day. I have very strong legs from bicycling all those years. As for my joints, I'm not stupid enough to blow them out while playing basketball like so many of my skinny friends. You won't ever see me hobbling around after knee surgery.

Do it for yourself, not for others.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

It's because you probably know what the Doctor is going to tell you.

Except for my weight, all my numbers are great!

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

If you haven't been to a doctor in 15 years - how do you know you are "in better health today than I ever was before"?

I feel better, look better and sleep better than 15 years ago. Back then, I was a butterball with nice legs from bicycling 20 miles per day. Today I'm more muscle mass than fat.

Maybe if you were eating 1,500 calories a meal, three times a day you would be maintaining that weight.

Nope. I eat 150 grams of carbs and 1,500 calories per day. This has been my current diet for the last four months. The fat is coming off my sides. That might be from the rowing machine at the gym.

After all, you don't want those relatives of yours spilling drinks and cigarette ashes into your coffin.

That's assuming I have any relatives left when I die. They're dropping like flies these days.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

Morbidly obese doesn't mean "you're guaranteed to drop dead", much like smoking 60 fags a day doesn't mean you're guaranteed to drop dead.

Not according to the self-righteous fat shamers, fitness nuts and ACs. The morbidly obese label should apply to people who are 2X, 3X or 4X bigger than I am. I see them all the time on public transit.

Excess weight is, however, causally correlated with a wide variety of different health problems.

I've taken steps to reduce those health risks by eating healthy, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep. The only thing I'm not doing as some people encouraged me to do is commit suicide.

That's an extremely low intake for an adult male.

Not necessarily. The average American eat 300+ grams of carbs and 2,000+ calories. A low-carb diet is 150 grams of carbs or less per day (some people eat only 27 grams of carb per day). Four months ago I reduce my calorie intake from 2,000 calories to 1,500 calories per day. The most noticeable change is fat moving off my sides. That might be from the rowing machine at the gym.

So how do you know?

I feel better, look better and sleep better than 15 years ago. Back then, I was a butterball with nice legs from bicycling 20 miles per day. Today I'm more muscle mass than fat.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Not according to the self-righteous fat shamers, fitness nuts and ACs.

Not sure where you got fitness nuts from, but sure if you pick whackos you can find someone with any stupid opinion. That proves nothing except there are idiots on the internet.

The morbidly obese label should apply to people who are 2X, 3X or 4X bigger than I am.

The medical profession defines it. Why do you care where they draw the line? Also dude, you're 350lbs: people 4x your weight don't exist.

That's an extremely low intake for an adult male.

It really is. The mean is about 2,500 for an adult man. 1500 is a lot below the mean. Carbs don't have all that much to do with it except that slower burning stuff makes it easier to stick to a lower calorie diet.

Four months ago I reduce my calorie intake from 2,000 calories to 1,500 calories per day. The most noticeable change is fat moving off my sides. That might be from the rowing machine at the gym.

Spot reduction doesn't exist. The fat has gone because you've reduced your energy intake.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

Not sure where you got fitness nuts from [...]

Coworkers. I get lectured frequently on the virtues of drinking water — never mind that I have a pitcher of water on my desk. Another coworker loudly recommended that I get lap band surgery in the middle of a meeting.

Also dude, you're 350lbs: people 4x your weight don't exist.

The Internet disagrees with you.

http://mostextreme.org/heaviest_man.php

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. I eat 150 grams of carbs and 1,500 calories per day. This has been my current diet for the last four months. The fat is coming off my sides. That might be from the rowing machine at the gym.

Sorry, fat metabolism is systemic. There were a couple of studies done where they had people do things like exercise one arm only. There was a measurable difference in muscle mass but no measurable change in fat distribution.

I enjoy rowing too, but I have no illusions that it will somehow give me a six-pack. I do it for the relaxation and core strength it builds.

There's a nice youtube video from a lecture series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoQ_h7Sqj-4

Also, 150g carb is far too much for me. Whatever genetic or gut biome conditions I personally have limits me to 30g per day if I want to keep insulin under control.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Coworkers. I get lectured frequently on the virtues of drinking water - never mind that I have a pitcher of water on my desk. Another coworker loudly recommended that I get lap band surgery in the middle of a meeting.

Sounds like your coworker is a dickhead. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with "morbidly obese" as a term.

The Internet disagrees with you.

My point still stands. Almost no one is even 2x your weight let alone 4x.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

Almost no one is even 2x your weight let alone 4x.

The Internet disagrees with you on 2X.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2034839/The-worlds-fattest-woman-700-pound-California-woman-enters-record-books.html

Here's a 3X reference.

http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a703/esq0806wifl-114-4/

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

The Internet disagrees with you on 2X.

How does finding a single example or even a handful refute my point that almost no one is that heavy.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

How does finding a single example or even a handful refute my point that almost no one is that heavy.

Because I've seen people who are heavier than me on public transit. I take up a single seat on the bus. These people take up two or three seats in the handicap area.

Here's another example: 5,000 super-sized people per year are denied access to medical helicopters because their weight.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/too-fat-rescue-more-heavy-patients-denied-air-ambulances-f6C10485763

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Because I've seen people who are heavier than me on public transit.

You've seen people 2x heavier than you on public transit? How many?

Here's another example: 5,000 super-sized people per year are denied access to medical helicopters because their weight.

They're talking about problems with people around the 440lb mark. That's not twice your weight. And from your link:

At Airlift Northwest near Seattle, crews start to worry about any patient who is heavier than 250 pounds and wider than 26 inches across,

That's lighter than you.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

You've seen people 2x heavier than you on public transit? How many?

About two dozen people in the past year on bus lines that go into the local hospitals. None of these people have muscle mass.

They're talking about problems with people around the 440lb mark. That's not twice your weight.

You denied that 4X people exist, so I provided a link. Then you denied that 2X people exist, so I provided a link. And, just in case you're being nitpicky, I provided a link for 3X people. What's your point?

That's lighter than you.

There's a difference between 250 pounds of fat and 350 pounds of muscle mass.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother was active (swimming), mother of 4, slightly overweight, non-smoker, healthy eater, no excessive drinking

She died 12 years ago at age 46

While my dad who is also overweight, probably more than her now, inactive, and has smoked all his life. Alive at 63

This is a purely genetic game here because my mom's family all died (relatively) young and my dad's family are all dying old. She died from Cancer which has nothing to do with being overweight.

I think in an ideal world, you would want to lose weight. Maybe it's difficult but it just increases life expectancy. Just a suggestion, not looking to argue here.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

You denied that 4X people exist, so I provided a link.

Yes I did.

Then you denied that 2X people exist

No I didn't.

There's a difference between 250 pounds of fat and 350 pounds of muscle mass.

You posted a photo. You ain't 350lbs of muscle. Hulk Hogan at his heaviest was 303 lbs of muscle. The 5x winner of worlds strongest man is 320 lbs. You are not them.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

This is a purely genetic game here because my mom's family all died (relatively) young and my dad's family are all dying old.

My father retired at 59-1/2-years-old because he was tired of construction work and all his older brothers kicked the bucket at 60. Unlike his older brothers, he stopped smoking after 30 years. He lived to be 75-years-old.

I think in an ideal world, you would want to lose weight.

In an ideal world I should be losing weight on a low carb and calorie-reduced diet.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

You posted a photo. You ain't 350lbs of muscle. Hulk Hogan at his heaviest was 303 lbs of muscle. The 5x winner of worlds strongest man is 320 lbs. You are not them.

Look at my picture. I'm not a butterball. I have more muscle mass than fat mass. When I worked at the gym for a year at the gym to increase my weight from 325 pounds to 400 pounds, I had a lot more muscle mass than I do now. But finding 4XL t-shirts was a bitch. So I dropped down to 350 pounds and wear 2XL t-shirts. If you compared me with a 250 pound fat guy, I have more muscle mass.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Look, first up, this isn't personal. There's this dumbass thing common in the UK and US that fat == morally bad. It isn't. It's more often than not bad for one's health, but even then that's not guaranteed.

Look at my picture. I'm not a butterball.

Uh... I mean sure you have muscle mass. But your neck is wider than your head in that photo and it's a big fat roll. And there are at rolls of fat at your elbows and wrists. Also with your arms out, your chest is out past your arms: muscle doesn't do that, fat does. You do seem to have a quite unusual distribution of fat though. Anyway here's what some very strong men look like:

Hulk Hogan (very little fat, 303 lb)
https://wrestlingrecaps.files....

Geoff Capes (fatter, 360lb, hard not to find pictures completely obscured by a beard)
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-i...

If you want more examples, people in the worlds strongest man contest are usually good choices because they are enormous, incredibly strong men with huge amounts of muscle, but are generally non pro, not ripped either and have a bit of far too making them somewhat normal in that regard.

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[__aaclcg7560]

Look, first up, this isn't personal.

If you have something to say, say it. I shouldn't have to ask 20 questions to figure out why you're nitpicking this issue to death. Seems like you're in denial that people bigger than me exist in the general population.

But your neck is wider than your head in that photo and it's a big fat roll.

My neck is not larger than my head. As a boss who was my size (and the runt of the family with seven-foot-tall father and brothers) told me, those are jowls. Even if my body fat drops down to zero, I don't think those jowls are going away.

And there are at rolls of fat at your elbows and wrists.

The roll of fat at my elbows is because I stopped lifting weights in general. It's easy for me to get bigger from lifting weights. I gave up a lot of muscle mass to go from 400 pounds (4XL shirts) to 350 pounds (2XL shirts). The fat deposits went where they went. I don't have any rolls of fat at my wrists even though that's what the picture imply. Of course, I've been accused of wearing griddle or weight lifting belt in that picture to make waist appear thinner.

You do seem to have a quite unusual distribution of fat though.

I was the poster child of mongolism in the 1970's, going to special ed classes even though the annual evaluations ranked me on the genius side. I graduated the eighth grade with a college-level reading comprehension and fifth-grade skills in everything else, skipped high school, spent four years in community college to get my general education degree (two years in remedial classes, two years in major classes). A decade later I went back to school to learn computer programming, taking two classes per semester, working 60+ hours per week and teaching Sunday school, and made the president's list for maintaining a 4.0GPA in my major.

[...] but are generally non pro, not ripped either and have a bit of far too making them somewhat normal in that regard.

I'm frequently asked if played linebacker in high school or college based on my physique today. Most people don't realize that I was a 400-pound butterball when I was younger. There are plenty of heavy pro athletes.

http://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/15-of-the-largest-active-athletes-in-the-world/

Re:I'm morbidly obese...

[serviscope_minor]

Seems like you're in denial that people bigger than me exist in the general population.

I have no idea where you got that idea from. I doubted that people 4x your weight existed, though it turns out I was wrong. I certainly never denied that anyone heavier than you existed. I know people who look more overweight than you, though possibly lighter since height obviously makes a difference.

My neck is not larger than my head.

It is. I just drew two vertical bars on the photo delimited by your neck. Your head fits very comfortably inside. Try it for yourself. The photograph certainly makes it look like you have plenty of fat.

If you put lots of muscle on easily, that's good. And, you seem to be blessed with low abdominal fat which is good since that seems to be the worst kind from medical risk factors.

There are plenty of heavy pro athletes.

I already posted some links to extremely heavy athletes, so I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[__aaclcg7560]

Being fat is a choice. Own it AND pay for it, I say.

Not always. A sixth-grade principal tried to fat shame my parents by calling them into a conference to explain why I was the proverbial fat kid at school. He was shocked to find out that my parents were skinnier than he was. It became a big mystery on how two skinny people can have a fat kid. For three years I was subjected to a dozen blood tests to determine why I was fat. No medical explanation was ever found. After my mother passed away from breast cancer a few years ago, I came across some black-and-white photos of her side of the family. The guys at the turn of the century were bigger than me and probably lumberjacks back then. Maybe genetics skipped a few generations throughout the Depression and World War II.

In unrelated news...

[penguinoid]

In unrelated news, men are 3 times less likely than women to care about their weight.

Re:In unrelated news...

[hcs_$reboot]

and women care 3 times less about their husband obesity than the opposite.

Re:In unrelated news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh they care ... if you are not obese yet, they worry you are going to leave them for another ... or worse, that you are going to outlive them.

Re:In unrelated news...

[AmiMoJo]

No, they are not saying that men are more likely to be obese, they are saying that being obese seems to have a much worse effect on lifespan for men than it does for women.

In other words, given a man and a women who are both obese, the man is more likely to have a significantly shortened lifespan.

Re:In unrelated news...

[penguinoid]

It could just as well be that they set the wrong baseline for obesity for men and women.

Re:In unrelated news...

[ndogg]

And their health, apparently.

Those Hungry Man commercials were probably the worst things to happen to men's health. How the hell did eating like a pig become manly?

Question

[Ol Olsoc]

Why do men die so much younger than their wives?

Answer

Because they want to.

Re:Question

[serviscope_minor]

haha it's funny because women, eh? Right fellas? Wives eh? amirite fellas?

Fellas?

Re:Question

[Ol Olsoc]

haha it's funny because women, eh? Right fellas? Wives eh? amirite fellas?

Fellas?

I never thought of you as an SJW. But here we are!

Re:Question

[serviscope_minor]

I never thought of you as an SJW

Really? Weird.

Re:Question

[Ol Olsoc]

I never thought of you as an SJW

Really? Weird.

Well, which of the 50 genders are you? I'm a lesbian trapped in a mans body.

alien plans

[Anonymous Coward]

When the aliens invade, they will feast on the fattest first

This doesn't sound like that big a deal, either...

[King_TJ]

I mean, seriously -- we're saying a guy can be moderately overweight and only lose an average of 12 months off his lifespan? How many hours of a person's life are robbed from trying to do workouts they don't even enjoy doing, or turning down the foods they really want to eat and enjoy, all in an attempt to maintain a weight that's lower than their body's natural "set point" wants it to be if they do nothing special to change it?

IMO, the *real* questions are about QUALITY of life vs. how many months we can extend one. If you're in a situation where some weight loss prevents you from becoming a diabetic, for example? Now we're talking about a really valid reason to make life/diet changes that you may not necessarily care for or enjoy.

so...

[Pfhorrest]

so i should stop trying to save for retirement or buy a house of any of that and just live like there's no tomorrow because there really isn't, i'm probably going to die before i ever get a chance to retire.

and ironically a large reason why i'm fat is because i sit at a desk all day trying to make the money to actually live my life someday when i'm old, and then stress eat when work makes me hate my life because it's about the only enjoyable thing i can really afford.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

so i should stop trying to save for retirement or buy a house of any of that and just live like there's no tomorrow because there really isn't, i'm probably going to die before i ever get a chance to retire.

and ironically a large reason why i'm fat is because i sit at a desk all day trying to make the money to actually live my life someday when i'm old, and then stress eat when work makes me hate my life because it's about the only enjoyable thing i can really afford.

Kind of makes you think that F-Society is on to something eh?

Amazes me how much these scientists have missed..

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 20 years.

BMI is antiquated as a measure of health because it completely ignores body composition.
Despite this being pointed out hundreds upon hundreds of times we see more studies like this that say that men who are more than certain height to weight ratio (IE what BMI is.. it is a quotient of weight to height.) Are more likely to die.. they don't say from what though.. layers of obfuscation.

So they are telling me that someone who is 6 ft 2 and 230 pounds at 5% body fat is unhealthy ? I don't think they can draw parallels between that guy and say a 200 pound 5 ft 5 guy with 40% body fat.. They are ignoring nuance upon nuance. This is not a major mystery though we don't have it all figured out for everyone in every shape and condition with every disease and genetic combination possible , but we know the general rules of the game and you cannot articulate it with just a BMI or weight number, the answer has more to it than that..

Watch though.. 20 years from now this idiot researchers will be talking about how everyone who is over 200 pounds is likely to die of heart disease, while most of society will have gotten in shape by then.. their captive audience would be people who still listen to their pseudoscience diet industry crap. ("Oh try homeopathy and acupuncture..it will increase your orgone energy field.. the weight will just melt off! trust me!) It is easy to fool desperate people who have problems that make weeding out bullshit a low priority.

100% WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I am told repeatedly, day after day, that there are no differences between males and females and that to even hint at such is sexism. These "scientists" are obviously sexist pigs who can't get laid and are taking it out on the womyn.

Re:100% WRONG!

[hcs_$reboot]

You should really have attended these sex education classes ; there is actually a difference.

Re:Amazes me how much these scientists have missed

[quantaman]

The last 20 years.

BMI is antiquated as a measure of health because it completely ignores body composition.
Despite this being pointed out hundreds upon hundreds of times we see more studies like this that say that men who are more than certain height to weight ratio (IE what BMI is.. it is a quotient of weight to height.) Are more likely to die.. they don't say from what though.. layers of obfuscation.

So they are telling me that someone who is 6 ft 2 and 230 pounds at 5% body fat is unhealthy ? I don't think they can draw parallels between that guy and say a 200 pound 5 ft 5 guy with 40% body fat.. They are ignoring nuance upon nuance.

I'm sure they're perfectly aware of the limitations of BMI. It's an imperfect measure but really cheap and easy to measure. Sure it misrepresents the guy who is "6 ft 2 and 230 pounds at 5% body fat", but those people are extremely rare and can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis or simply ignored without invalidating the broader conclusions.

This is not a major mystery though we don't have it all figured out for everyone in every shape and condition with every disease and genetic combination possible , but we know the general rules of the game and you cannot articulate it with just a BMI or weight number, the answer has more to it than that..

Well these researchers cleared up part of the mystery, obesity is an extra risk factor if you're male.

I suspect this has to do with the fact that males tend to disproportionately accumulate abdominal fat.

Watch though.. 20 years from now this idiot researchers will be talking about how everyone who is over 200 pounds is likely to die of heart disease, while most of society will have gotten in shape by then.. their captive audience would be people who still listen to their pseudoscience diet industry crap. ("Oh try homeopathy and acupuncture..it will increase your orgone energy field.. the weight will just melt off! trust me!) It is easy to fool desperate people who have problems that make weeding out bullshit a low priority.

And now the weird part of the comment where you seem to have conflated scientists and homoeopaths...

Except for this

[Anonymous Coward]

There are bodybuilders who die young and fat bitches still eating bonbons into their retirement years.

Study something that matters. Is Slashdot sponsored by Richard Simmons now? The editors all seem like they just got new vaginas lately.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Hylandr]

Yea I was thinking the same thing, where's the equality now?

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit. if energy in energy out, you'll lose weight. DNA cannot stop physics.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad DNA tries to compensate.
The body has a way of adapt its energy consumption to just below its energy intake.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

The explanation is you eat trash and don't exercise. Close your mouth and do some physical activities.

Mystery solved.

Stuff for nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember when slashdot was about technology and stuff for nerds? It is increasingly same health & lifestyle & general news as anywhere else, except skinned as tech so people feel techie.

Obesity Confirmed Sexist

[Anonymous Coward]

We must end this biological war on men.

Re:This doesn't sound like that big a deal, either

[serviscope_minor]

How many hours of a person's life are robbed from trying to do workouts they don't even enjoy doing, or turning down the foods they really want to eat and enjoy, all in an attempt to maintain a weight that's lower than their body's natural "set point" wants it to be if they do nothing special to change it?

None?

It all depends on how you do it. If you try to go on a diet and gym spree and shed the weight you'll probably have a miserable time, lose a bit, flame out and then put it all back on.

I found myself a bit overweight a while back. The solution isn't a diet, it's small but permanent change in lifestyle. Part of it is building exercise of some sort into the daily routine, rather than gym sessions. Other parts involve portion control for example. There's no need to stuff yourself to the point of pain, for example. I have a natural and rather strong urge to do that so one aspect is to take the option off the table as it were. After a while your set point for "full" changes and now what would have been a normal fullness to me feels like I slightly overate.

I don't have to avoid foods I like. I still eat meat, and carbs and I still drink beer. I just eat a bit less of those and eat more fresh veggies than and generally avoid the highest GI carbs if possible, but not religiously. Also, I avoid buying foods I can snack on. It's not even that I hugely enjoy them anyway, but if there's a plate of biscuits in front of me, I'll just start eating them. If all your food takes even 5 minutes to prepare, it cuts down opportunistic snacking enormously.

So here's the thing,I don't miss it. I still eat the foods I like, but I don't make myself uncomfortably full, and I don't snack on crappy food that I don't even enjoy that much just because it's there. If anything I'm enjoying the food more now.

And don't aim to lose weight fast. I aimed for 1-2lbs per month which is achievable without feeling hungry all the time. If you aim much faster there's a good chance you'll feel crap and fail. The thing to remember is it's a lifestyle change not a diet. You want to reduce your total calorie intake a small amount for ever. And shedding the weight will take a long time, possibly several years.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Hognoxious]

There are limits to adaptation. See also: Auschwitz.

Comparitively speaking

[Joe Branya]

Bad comparison. Try: "Three times more deadly for men than for women",

Literally "Obesity is three times as deadly for men than women" lends itself to the meaning "obesity kills three times as many men as are killed by women", which may be true. Or is it the obesity in women that is killing the men when the women roll over in bed at night? Is this like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)?.

I can see it now in the DSM-6 or 7; a new reason for the rise in the male death rate. "Sleeping Male Asphyxiating Syndrome- Help!" (SMASH).

Beautiful sunrise out here on the porch in Rhode Island. I've either have had too much or too little coffee... or maybe as much coffee than I can take.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[buck-yar]

No broscience, cite studies please.

It's "three times AS deadly for men AS for women"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorant American cretins.

Unfair!!!

[sumsguy]

Let's make it equally hazardous for women as it is for men. Of course, why would they start this battle?

Because

[Anonymous Coward]

... it is 10 per cent for men, more than three times as much.

Because fat women still get to fuck someone.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[jellomizer]

However the DNA can make your body more or less efficient than others, that and combination of our bacteria in our system, really determines how we digest food and energy we gain from it.
Some people whose body temperature is just naturally higher than others means there is extra energy being spent to keep the body at that temperature. While people with a lower temperature will burn less.
Then there are the calories that pass thru our system. We just don't digest them. So some people will be able to digest more food, and others it just passes thru.
Calories in vs burned isn't really accurate. Sure diet and exercise helps, however some people can live like a sloth and stay skinny, while others will gain pounds in one day of eating something they shouldn't and would take weeks of exercise to burn off.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[__aaclcg7560]

The explanation is you eat trash and don't exercise.

I ate the same thing as my skinny parents and had an active lifestyle as a kid. Being a Gen Xer, I had no choice but to run around the neighborhood.

Close your mouth and do some physical activities.

As a young adult working at an Italian restaurant job after college, I rode my bike 20 miles per day for three years. My average weight during that time was 325 pounds. After I quit that job, I didn't eat spaghetti for another seven years.

Re:Amazes me how much these scientists have missed

[careysub]

BMI is antiquated as a measure of health because it completely ignores body composition.

As a weight-lifter, I am very well aware of the limitations of the BMI since it declares everyone with a lot of muscle mass "overweight" or even "obese" even if their body-fat is in the low single digits.

But it is an excellent tool for studying populations, where the odd individual to whom it does not apply are averaged out of importance. This is what the BMI was developed for, and it is well proven in this role.

It is a useful tool for assessing the health status of most individuals also, but not everyone. Healthy weight increases with age, it is normal and healthier to carry somewhat more weight, but apparently there is no age-adjusted scale available, strangely enough. It is less accurate for very tall people (though an adjusted BMI scale is available for this). And it is useless for people will a lot of muscle mass, as I mentioned above.

It is annoying that most health advice sources ignore these caveats, or seem utterly unaware of them.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been trained to make excuses....but trust me, you need to start doing something.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

DNA cannot melt steel beams.

Anything to get to that sweet final release

[hattig]

"Men get fatter to die earlier and escape" would be a better title.

Single men go to the gym. Married men get fat.

The evidence is clear. Sweet death is the ultimate desire for many many men, and they will do all they can to achieve this in the most enjoyable manner possible - namely overeating. They can then escape the mental torture of their relationship.

Married or not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they factor in whether or not the men were married?

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

There are limits to adaptation. See also: Auschwitz.

Yeesh, that was kind of in bad taste, wouldn't you say?

Re: Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for th

[kilfarsnar]

Jonah Hill?

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[werepants]

Just wanted to say sorry for the internet douchebags out there giving you shit. It's easy for people who have been thin for life to see it as a discipline issue, but there's lots of research showing that the regularly recommended starvation strategies actually lead to no benefit over time or even weight gain because of the body's permanent decrease in metabolic rates.

Re: Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for th

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmmm, so how much did/do you weigh 7 years later? Why did you omit that relevant detail?

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[__aaclcg7560]

[...] there's lots of research showing that the regularly recommended starvation strategies actually lead to no benefit over time or even weight gain because of the body's permanent decrease in metabolic rates.

The NY Times had a great article on the study of a group from The Biggest Loser TV show, where their metabolism actually slowed down enough to require significantly less calories and they gained weight on a recommended diet for their height and age.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html

I sometimes wonder if that's my current situation. When I asked for a ten-speed bicycle for my 17th birthday, my father told me it was of money as the bicycle sit in the garage. I then spent the summer riding that bike everywhere (including a 36-mile trip in one day) and losing 70 pounds. As an young adult, I rode 20 miles per day to a restaurant job for three years.

Re: Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for th

[__aaclcg7560]

Ummmmmm, so how much did/do you weigh 7 years later? Why did you omit that relevant detail?

As a teenager, 400 pounds. As young adult riding my bicycle 20 miles per day for three years, 325 pounds. Weight training and building muscle mass, 400 pounds. I'm currently 350 pounds.

Time to apply a clue-by-four to some sexist morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash 1: Society =/= genetics.
Newsflash 2: Only one of the above is susceptible to conscious change.
Newsflash 3: That would be society (in this case, sexism).

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[penguinoid]

bullshit. if energy in < energy out, you'll lose weight. DNA cannot stop physics.

But biology can stop energy deficits. In fact, biology's main design feature is to ensure that energy in > energy out on average, on penalty of extinction.

However, mind can overcome biological urges, either through sheer willpower or by manipulating biology (eg some foods may be miscalculated by the body in the energy in measurement).

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[jellomizer]

As someone who had lost 60 lbs with Diet and exercise. Let me tell you again. We have different body types. I am stronger and faster than most people my age, my vitals are stellar. I hit the Gym 5 to 6 times a week and keep active... However I am not thin built, I will not reach a healthy BMI, as I took a Body fat scale. And took out my body fat, I would still be overweight. However, I need to watch my diet extremely carefully or the weight comes back (Fast). Other people can have Pizza every day, and not exercise. They may not be as healthy as me, but they are thinner, and have that healthy BMI

10 lbs = 10 marathons*

[drunken_boxer777]

Calorie deficit trumps exercise, strictly for weight loss. (Exercise has obviously has other benefits.)

For example, your 500 calorie/day deficit results in a 3,500 calories deficit in one week to lose one pound. For a 200-lb individual, it takes about 3,500 calories to run a marathon. Want to lose ten pounds? Diet for 10 weeks, or run 10 marathons.* Your choice.

(It's not that simple, since your body doesn't just tap into fat reserves unconditionally. Your body will also adjust your metabolism based on changes to caloric intake. But at a crude level this isn't far off.)

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Hognoxious]

Clearly your granddad was there and he was a total lardass.

Hate to break it to you, but he was either a guard or a collaborator.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[Anonymous Coward]

that was kind of in bad taste

On the contrary, tastes great and less filling. The best thing is Jews are kosher, if prepared properly, meaning, well done, almost charred.

Re:Only one Twitter hashtag is appropriate for thi

[werepants]

Wow... even lending support to someone being fat-shamed will get you a troll mod. Nice, slashdot.