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Old 05-30-2016, 01:36 PM   #61
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I was fat when my Doc up here said I 'was fat - aka 400 Cholesterol and high BP. He went to high school in Metaire so he knew.

"No more fried seafood platters and stuff for you." Dat's a no no.

Diet change. Gym 3 days a week. 6 mile walks, etc.

heh heh heh - that was back in 06. Now I have bib overalls and a range of oversize pants with a suspender collection. Hit or miss on diet and exercise. I am in the land of BBQ. Still take pills.
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Old 05-30-2016, 01:50 PM   #62
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...Especially because I'll probably need knee surgeries from all the running!
My knees are OK from years of running. I did wear out a hip, though. Much easier replacement.
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Old 05-30-2016, 05:47 PM   #63
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I just find it interesting from a sociological perspective.

In 1997 the obesity rate in US was 19%. In 2016 it's 30%. Obesity charts per state shows a continual increase each year. There is no decrease.

Despite spending billions, Americans will only get fatter.

And this truly is a very recent phenomenon.

So why does it happen, what can prevent it? Obesity is a precursor to diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

2/3s of us are overweight. Literally, it's now abnormal to be of normal weight.
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Old 05-30-2016, 06:35 PM   #64
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2/3s of us are overweight. Literally, it's now abnormal to be of normal weight.
According to some it is because, in that nineteen year period, two out of three of us lost our willpower.
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Old 05-30-2016, 06:42 PM   #65
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Maybe there has been a sudden outbreak of thyroid problems over the past twenty years.
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Old 05-31-2016, 02:21 AM   #66
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I think most of the points have been said already for what I find concerning about it:

1) It results in high health costs, when it becomes the norm, at some point, which I would be somewhat surprised if the non-use of medicare/SS made up for it, considering how high healthcare costs are, this point is up in the air though somewhat, there are a lot of factors to take into account.

2) It occurs sometimes on airplanes, and seat space just keeps getting smaller.

3) Obesity doesn't have a beautifying effect, to say the least...it is unfortunate it is truly uncontrollable for a minority of people.

4) The biggest issue not mentioned, there has been a huge explosion in the number of people becoming obese, which is when it starts having a very large effect on lifespans. It isn't good for a lot of reasons when a large minority, and perhaps eventually a majority, are suffering from something equivalent to a serious disease, such as causing a large drag on each nation's life-expectancy, lowering each countries productivity, and making voluntary ER rarer.
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Old 05-31-2016, 02:29 AM   #67
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If you watch at old TV, people were much thinner than. We have more sedentary activities now for entertainment.
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Old 05-31-2016, 03:56 AM   #68
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I know the statistics say more people are fat (and fatter) than 20 years ago, but my teenage memories from the 1970's are that pretty much everyone's parents, except mine, looked rather fat to me. The men all had prominent bellies, and the women always had fleshy hips and rears. I remember being shocked by the sight of a beautiful young neighbor woman, who was probably around 30, when she appeared in a bathing suit. She was young and beautiful down to her waist. Lower down, she was so heavy and flabby that her limbs looked like plastic bags of cottage cheese. I had no idea that could happen to someone so young, plus I couldn't figure out how she still had a small waistline. Heredity, of course.

It's true that there were not many overweight kids in my high school classes, but in college a number of fellow students were starting to get heavy. I figured it started when they acquired cars, and stopped walking or riding bikes. I went to college in south Florida, where everyone who wasn't in my age group seemingly was 60+, and absolutely all those older people looked, to me, like Fisher-Price people: no waists, hips and chests the same width. And when I started working, I was one of a cohort of young women, early 20's in age, who went into the same trainee program. All the others were overweight, and several had to be 200 pounds.

So my memory is that there was quite a lot of fatness, 40 years ago. I decided it was normal (even though I wanted to avoid it myself). That is why I have been slightly bemused at the fuss that's been made over people's weight in recent years.
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Old 05-31-2016, 05:14 AM   #69
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I had forgotten about this "school of thought." I have always felt it had some merit... particularly in the theory that the chemicals used to rapidly put weight on animals destined for the human food chain are passed on to the consumer. Anyway...

How Vitamin Supplementation Leads To Human Livestock Obesity

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But first, a bit of clarification. I get the sense that some may be misinterpreting or misunderstanding our thesis here. It is, admittedly, a subtle distinction because it’s a chain, not direct cause –> effect.

What we said is that a diet rich in B vitamins (and perhaps other added, isolated nutrients—or even minerals like salt) enables you to eat a shitty refined junk food diet if you should happen to choose to eat them. Without those vitamins, you wouldn’t have much urge to consume those obesogenic foods or beverages.

Some “traditional” diets may too have been relatively high in some of the fortified and enriched nutrients we’ve been talking about (such as B vitamins), but they didn’t have the kinds of junk food we do now. They didn’t have a taste for it, apparently, or perhaps it would have emerged more naturally and widely on its own, rather than through livestock farming-like food engineering, intended to have animals put on weight rapidly.

We would not expect people to become obese unless they chose to eat shitty foods. But, their consumption of B vitamin-dense foods would better enable them to do so, if that was their choice. For example, a non-obese body builder, traditional diet eater, or health nut is a poor counterargument to our thesis, irrespective of their level of consumption of these nutrients, because junk foods aren’t a part of their normal diets.

Let’s simplify the concept: B vitamins do not cause obesity. They simply enable someone to eat shitty foods that they would normally lose their appetites for. The vitamins themselves do not cause obesity.

Furthermore, this is not an idea that requires any formal “proof” or study, since it was already proven a century ago. That’s why the farming industry fortifies their feed. This isn’t new or controversial. In fact, it’s established knowledge and industry practice. It’s uniformly known and practiced in the farming industry and the results are predictable and reproducible 100% of the time. What we did is to simply point out how the food industry adopted similar practices for feeding junk food to Human Livestock.
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Old 05-31-2016, 05:21 AM   #70
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RonBoyd, did you intend to post this in the "Why We Get Fat" thread?

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I had forgotten about this "school of thought." I have always felt it had some merit... particularly in the theory that the chemicals used to rapidly put weight on animals destined for the human food chain are passed on to the consumer. Anyway...

How Vitamin Supplementation Leads To Human Livestock Obesity
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Old 05-31-2016, 05:28 AM   #71
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RonBoyd, did you intend to post this in the "Why We Get Fat" thread?
Hmmm. Had kinda forgotten about that thread... there are a bunch of them (similar ones), isn't there? Besides this thread is more current and seems to heading that direction anyway -- looking for fault.
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Old 05-31-2016, 05:33 AM   #72
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I don't really care that others are fat. I used to be fat. For me, losing weight is somewhat easy. But I understand that it is not easy for many people. There's a lot more junk food out there now than in the past. It's easy to get and most often an easier choice over healthy foods when people are in a rush. It seems that most people have neither the time for exercise or preparing healthy meals.
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Old 05-31-2016, 06:56 AM   #73
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According to some it is because, in that nineteen year period, two out of three of us lost our willpower.
I don't think it's willpower. My siblings and I were all skinny (still are now in our late 50s/early 60s although we have to work at it) but it wasn't from any conscious effort to limit our food intake. It was just different then. We were outside playing- riding our bikes, climbing up into a "tree house" (really a platform nailed into the branches that would probably be condemned now), going to the pool with Mom during the summer. Mom made nearly everything from scratch other than using cake mix a lot. Yeah, we even had cake and cookies although with 5 kids you couldn't overdo them. We rarely went to restaurants- even McDonald's.

Fast forward to now and there are so many sedentary activities for kids. In some areas, it's not safe to go out and play or ride your bike. School recess has been cut in favor of more academics. Snacks between meals, mini-Oreos in the cupholder next to your car seat, McDonald's- all everyday occurrences. If you want French fries, you don't have to clean and cut potatoes, deep-fry them, drain them, etc. Just nuke the Ore-Idas from the freezer or head for Mcdonald's. Don't forget to supersize.

And don't get me started on high-fructose corn syrup, palm oil and the other junk in prepared foods.

I believe it's much harder to be a normal-weight adult if you start off as a chubby kid, with bad eating habits.
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Old 05-31-2016, 07:00 AM   #74
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Actually, this thread is specifically about why people care whether other people are fat. If people don't care, they can post about that, too.

I'm not really interested in why people get fat. As you said, there are lots of threads about that.

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Hmmm. Had kinda forgotten about that thread... there are a bunch of them (similar ones), isn't there? Besides this thread is more current and seems to heading that direction anyway -- looking for fault.
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Old 05-31-2016, 07:32 AM   #75
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Otherwise, it doesn't bother me, and I wish everyone the best in their personal battles if they choose to wage them.



I can't get behind the "we all pay their medical bills" rationale. My father's pancreatic cancer treatment was almost entirely funded by tax payers (via Tricare and Medicare) and had nothing to do with obesity or probably any other preventable cause. I know how much the taxpayers paid to treat him for three years. My health care is also paid for by tax payers (as is my salary and a good portion of my retirement) and likely will be for my entire life, so it'd be awfully hypocritical of me to bemoan public expenditures on health care for just about anyone.

...Especially because I'll probably need knee surgeries from all the running!
I don't think we bemoan the expenditure but neither can we ignore the tons and tons of evidence that obesity and smoking cause numerous chronic, preventable conditions.

My employer now charges a premium on our health care benefits if you are smoker and/or obese and it's hefty. you will pay anywhere from 500 to 1000 more a year
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Old 05-31-2016, 07:44 AM   #76
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Why do people care so much? IMO, that depends on where people regard fatness as a lifestyle choice or condition. Similar to the views on smoking (choice or nicotine addiction) or drinking and gambling (choice or genetic tendency).
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Old 05-31-2016, 07:56 AM   #77
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I do not care if people are "fat" (and sometimes "fat" is in the eye of the beholder). I care more if an individual puts me in a situation where they cause me an inconvenience and get upset when I choose not to accept that inconvenience.

Just two examples:
- I am on a plane trip when an extremely heavy person is sitting in the middle seat. They are so big I am leaning into the aisle to avoid being in constant contact with them. A flight attendant comes up and quietly whispers to me that she can find me another seat with more room, so I just nod and get up, not saying anything, and go to the other seat. At the baggage claim, the heavy person comes up to me and asks do I have problem with them. I'm puzzled and say "huh". They start up with how I "fled" to another seat, how it was embarrassing to them, do I have a problem with heavy people, etc. I am stunned... all I kept saying in return was "I just wanted some room"... yet I was the villain.
- One our sons had a heavy female classmate in college develop a huge crush on him. Now, this son was kind of naive about the wiles of romance at the time. He was polite to her, but just wasn't interested in a romantic relationship. It got to the point where she was showing up at his room to see if he wanted "to hang out", or would try to monopolize his time at parties. Finally she did something to which he responded "look, I'm not interested in that sort of thing with you"... and she started in on the "its because I'm fat, right" and just dressed him down in public about his "narrow mind" and "bigotry". Poor son asked DW and I "Is there something wrong with me for not wanting to be with someone whom I just do not find attractive??"
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Old 05-31-2016, 09:53 AM   #78
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There is overweight and there is obese. Big difference.

A few years ago our nephew came to visit with the hopes of finding a job in the oil patch. Very nice person, capable, etc. But obese. He had little or no chance of getting hired. Not because of his appearance but because of employer financials.

As someone who has hired in the past I can assure you that it may seem that obese people are discriminated against but not simply because of appearance.

Employers shy away for a few financial reasons. Obese people cost more on the health system and therefore increase the benefits cost to a company. The most recent numbers I have seen for a diabetic for instance is 2.5 times the health cost of the average. Then factor in paid sick leave, etc. As an employer if two candidates are equal it comes down to a financial call.

We were very straightforward with this young man. He went home. Stopped the video games all night, bags and bags of chips etc and multiple sodas. Trimmed down, exercise instead of video games, lost weight. His life has changed.
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Old 05-31-2016, 11:19 AM   #79
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The title is the topic. The "Why do we get fat" thread reminded me that many people really dislike seeing others who are fat.

It is one thing to care that you, yourself are fat. That's your business. But if you happen to care whether other people weigh too much, why is that?

Naturally, I have some notions of the answers. I'd like to learn what others have to say.

Amethyst
I personally don't 'dislike' seeing fat people, so I don't match your premise. I do, however, care if someone else weighs too much. I care because I care about them as a fellow human. I wish everyone to be in optimum health, which includes weight.
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Old 05-31-2016, 01:26 PM   #80
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The psychological impact from all this "caring" would make some people suicidal.
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