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"The Weight Of The Nation": Documenting America's Obesity Epidemic: Part 2 - Choices
Yesterday we saw the first part of the HBO Documentary "The Weight Of The Nation" focusing on America's Obesity Epidemic which could be summarized as follows: "68.8% of Americans are overweight or obese - what are the consequences?" Today, the premium cable channel has released the next episodes in the series, titled Choices. The second film poses a question that almost anyone who’s struggled with excess weight has asked, if only in jest: For all the remarkable high-tech tools available to medicine, for all the billions of dollars in drug research, there’s still no highly effective medication to prevent or reverse obesity – why?
From HBO:
Researchers are, in fact, developing and evaluating strategies to help people reach and maintain a healthy weight, so that they can look forward to healthier lives. Diet is a part of the equation, but most name-brand diets promise quick, dramatic rewards and gloss over the long-term effort needed to keep weight off. Maintaining weight loss is a challenge, and success requires sustained changes in our food and physical activity.
Weight - whether we gain it or lose it - is dependent on our body’s energy balance: We are in balance when we take in and burn off the same number of calories each day. Take in more calories than we burn, and the pounds add up. Take in fewer, and the number on the scale goes down.
Your body’s energy requirements don’t necessarily stay the same throughout your entire adult life. One theory suggests that if you become overweight or obese, your body establishes a new normal weight, called its “set point,” which your body will fight to maintain even after you lose weight.
Shows like ‘The Biggest Loser’ may lead us to believe that exercise is the best or only way to lose weight. But successful programs aimed at losing weight and keeping it off target both eating less and being more physically active.
We eat for all sorts of reasons, not just because we’re hungry. We eat because we’re bored, sad, tired or - all too frequently - stressed. When we eat for reasons other than getting the right nutrition, we affect our weight and put our health at risk. New research suggests that taking time to think about what we eat - and why we are eating - can be an effective way to attain and maintain a healthy weight.
As adults, most of us spend more than half of our waking hours at work. And today’s jobs, many of which require hours a day parked in front of a computer, are often both sedentary and stressful. But there are small steps we can take to eat better and move more at work, even when our schedules aren’t flexible.
Making the decision to set and achieve realistic goals can, over time, lead to big results. And as we learn from Rhonda and Elana’s warm and supportive relationship, having a friend and partner can be invaluable when it comes to the hard work of keeping weight off.
If you have high blood pressure, the doctor isn't going to tell you to bring it down for six months and then do whatever you want. Maintaining a lower weight is similar. It’s an ongoing process that requires work and must be constantly monitored.
But the all effort to maintain a healthy weight does pay off. The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), a large, multi-site, NIH-funded study, has shown that high-risk participants (people with “pre-diabetes”) who lost a modest amount of weight through changes in diet and activity levels greatly reduced their chances of developing type 2 diabetes.
Part 2:
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Even though the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald got their headline wrong ( it isn't sugar, it's high fructose corn syrup) there's new evidence that HFCS not only makes you fat it makes you stupid.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/sugar-can-make-you-dumb-us-scientists-warn-20120516-1ypox.html
Maybe those SMH editors have been drinking a few too many Big Gulps
Mmm no:
HFCS has 55% fructose and 45% glucose, in terms of sugars it contains
Cane sugar is precisely 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
So HFCS is only 10% worse for you than cane sugar. That's all. Both are horrible for you when taken regularly and bad when taken in sizable single doses, particularly on an empty stomach.
Simple Answer:
EAT LESS
MOVE MORE
Problem Solved
This whole subject makes me sick. Travel to any parking lot and watch the parade of slobs pull into the "handicap" parking because they are considered "disabled". Screw that...physical activity!! These people should be forced to park in the farthest spot available. They don't believe in exercise..they are sloths. Then, medicare/aid will buy them a double-wide scooter. The plot thickens. Then, since they can't fit their fat ass into a public bathroom stall we have to remodel the planet to accommodate their fatness. Then, every "public transit" agency has to pay tens of millions of dollars to retro their busses to hoist a cow so these people won't have to dare raise a leg onto a bus step. When the apocalypse hits and the desperate turn to cannibalism, please let these people be the first to go.
It's not always laziness or self-control issues, especially with these "recessions" we have had the last 12 yrs. everytime I find myself under-employed or unemployed, I somehow get into phenomenol shape. Then, enter the thankless salary positions that throw 55 hour workweeks and commutes and BAM, I feel and look 20 years older and gain 40 pounds in the year. Luckily for me, I have been under-employed the last 2 years and I'm busting out a physique that makes me look like I'm roiding (never done btw)! I blame workweeks for the working class and laziness for the moochers!
Hey, Americans are finally putting their acts together
Soda Makers Scramble to Fill Void as Sales Drop
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/business/pepsi-and-competitors-scrambl...
So time for hope.
The train of continuity in the food production process that makes food ever so widely and easily available certainly adds to the obesity issue. When the continuity is interrupted, you get this:
http://www.economist.com/node/21526778
"for all the billions of dollars in drug research, there’s still no highly effective medication to prevent or reverse obesity – why?"
Sick Care IS Profit
Because the Pharmaceutical corporations know there is more profit to be made off of fat people if they remain fat...
because no pill will reverse stupidity
or laziness?
The Death Synergy of Big Ag and Big Pharma will be hard for Americans to defeat. Feed them crap and pump them full of pills when sick. How much money is in THAT equation? Any improvement will have to happen at the grass roots becuase there is no way in hell it will happen at the federal level where we have the best government money can buy. In fact the last couple Farm Bills work to crush small family farms who grow the health foods.
Good luck to California and their efforts to label all GMO food products. That would be a big step in the right direction. Screw Monsanto -- the worlds most dangerous company.
Fat people, STOP EATING, its making you fat. Duh.
Maybe because a lot of these fat slugs are more intersted in the immediate gratification of stuffing their pie hole than the long term implications of their greed and lack of self-control.
First, THANK YOU for all your work! I've never seen more ardent people give away their outstanding labors for free!
As regards obesity, however, you guys are way off. You can't believe these obesity stats any more than you can the BLS. The only factual assessment today is by Tom Naughton in a movie he made called Fat Head. You can rent the whole movie for a month from Amazon for $3.99 or purchase it. Well worth watching several times. Everything we've been taught about diet and nutrition is a load of baloney, just like everything we've been taught about govt and economics is a load of baloney. Please watch this movie, and refer your followers to it.
I have never had a weight issue in my life. I'm 51, 6'1" 190 pounds. I have worn the same pant size for 30 years. Heart rate 61, BP 135/80.
The most I have ever weighed is 206. When I feel I have put on too much weight I stop consuming. I eat and drink what I like as I feel appropriate. I love beer, hate sweets.
Never been on a diet, never will. Cholesterol has only been a problem when I had stress jobs, not gonna happen again. To me it's about will power and the ability to deal with hunger pangs. That simple.
Never underestimate the role being poor play's in this epidemic.
Part 4 of this series points on the in one area of state (one of the southern states), the life expectancy for a male was 62.....8 miles away it was 90. The rate of obesity in the first area was almost 60% in the second area less than 5%.
In many of these poorer areas they don't have access to supermarkets, there are no parks for kids to play in, they have almost no access to preventive healthcare (think even a GP), they have lots of bodega's and fast food.
Like it or not poverty plays a role in this epidemic.
Could they be imports from a third world country that has a normal life expectancy of 62? Just wondering. If you went in a supermarket, you wouldn't be thinking healthy food comes from there.
MOOOOSE KNUCKLES!!!!!
'eat right, don't drink or smoke, exercise daily and some day you will die.'
Rodney Dangerfield I think, can't remember exactly.
I don't encourage being huge, just find the saying funny.
The evidence against CORN SYRUP is overwheming. It is in a preponderance of products. I don't believe Americans are just a bunch of lazy fat @$$e$$. I do beieve MONSANTO has an agenda that affects ALL of US!
The federal government has been price supporting plain old cane sugar, which is just marginally less bad for you than high fructose corn syrup, for a very long time. The feds support HFCS as well of course, and have had a role in making it seem like something safer than cane (or beet) sugar was. Note also that while evil evil Monsanto is a poster child for lefty hatred, the industries downstream of them (agriculture) and downstream of that (packaged foods companies) and downstream of that (retailers) are much larger at each step. The packaged foods companies were heavy heavy lobbiers and funders of biased research that came to back the "Food Pyramid" issued by George McGovern's congressional sideshow back in the 70's.
Monsanto is...well...a small fry. Think, oh, General Mills. Coca Cola. Think Big.
"68.8% of Americans are overweight or obese"
75% of fat Americans will last longer in a famine than a skinny American.
I just made that up.
These people are pathetic.
Eat things producted as far from the factory as possible.
Eat slowly untill you're not hungry.
Lift for strength.
Fuck.
In that order? Won't we be little tired for quality sex right after strength training sessions?
I've been fortunate that I've never had a weight problem, particularly now that I no longer have a desk job. For a long time, however, I just felt tired all the time and didn't have a lot of ambition. I chalked it up to too much toxic crud built up over the years and probably some residual Lymes. A couple of months back I managed to do a five-day water fast. (Shhhh, I cheated with a grapefruit on day three, but that's it.) The first two days were awful; not from being hungry, but from the dumping of toxic waste into my bloodstream. It was like having the flu, and I slept almost nonstop. After that, it was pretty easy. I did two weeks of psyllium husks and bentonite clay for an additional internal cleanse. Its like a Brillo pad for your insides and doesn't make you feel like your stomach is fist f*cking your colon.
After all that, I lost 10 pounds. I feel 10 years younger and I have 10 times the energy I did before. I've never been a soda drinker or a junk food junkie, but my diet wasn't exactly ideal either. I've made some changes there as well and have kept the weight off, even though that wasn't really the intended goal.
Disclosure: No TV in my house for 4 years, walk at least an hour daily, and run me arse off as a bartender to pay The Man.
Now, if I could just quit smoking...
You are valuable as a live, pharmaceutical ingesting consumer. Dead, not so much. Freedom fries! Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.
That was excellent. Thank you. Have already passed it on.
Obesity isn't just about calories and exercise; it is also about the hormones that control the deposition or utilization of body fat. Those hormones respond to the protein:carbohydrate ratio in your food and the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fats (assuming severely restricted total fat). Balance those and you'll be amazed at how fast you lose weight, with little change in the calories you consume or the amount of exercise you do.
A "paleolithic diet" does those things. --- I lost 30 pounds in three months and reduced my systolic blood pressure by almost 100 mmhg. Then, I stopped taking my blood pressure medicine and it was still down by half that amount.
After my 30s, I struggled with some weight gain. Not too bad, but I gained a couple of clothing sizes thanks to a desk job. Diet wasn't too bad - some eating out, but eating in was generally unprocessed. I commented to my dad about the weight gain and he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "THINK about it: if you want to fatten a cow, you feed it grain. Not protein; not fat. So I cut grain, sugar, fruit, and starchy veg out entirely for 3 weeks (increasing leafy green veg and meat/fish to compensate), including honey in my tea which proved the hardest. For my trouble, in 3 weeks I lost 17 lbs without extra exercise, feeling hungry, or even reducing calories much. More importantly, the headaches that plagued me all my life vanished.
Until I had a sandwich, and I got a 2 day splitting headache. The sandwich bread was the only change - I had inadvertently pursued a gluten-free diet for the first time, and that proved enlightening. After being low-gluten or gluten-free for years, the weight is much easier to maintain now, the headaches are gone so long as the wheat is, and some inexplicable rashes have cleared up as well.
So, elimination diets can be useful. As can smart Dads that grow beef cattle.
Is it just swell that the most resposible get to pay for the worst pieces of dung that command the last remnant of the middle class to fund the disgustingly obese.
I have had some very real problems with crybaby pain and such. I WENT TO A DOCTOR AND HAD TO WAIT FOR THE UNIMAGIANIBLY fat sows that were all on welfare and never paid a nickle for their care to get their time with the crank before I could mention my problem. I walked out long before I wold get an audience with the doc. The unimaginably fat sows in wheelchairs that live on SS DISABILITY ALONG WITH THEIR offspring that are so stupid and unemployable that the losers of the middle class must support them and their loser families (I use that term loosely as they haven't the slightest notion of what constitutes Patriarchy that the PC crowd continually rails against.
I WENT OFF ON MY TWO DAUGHTERS BACK WHEN THEY WERE IN SOPHOMORE AND JUNIOR YEARS OF high school. They did not think that their fellow classmates in the public school that they attended were disgustingly fat and stupid. A girl of eighteen is at her peak of attraction to a potential mate that will provide for herself and her children. A very large preponderence of 17-20 year old girls here is a fat assed disgusting flabby piece of unappealing flesh.
I MADE IT ADAMANTINE CLEAR TO MY WIFE PRIOR TO OUR MARRAIGE THAT I would not ever tolerate fatso. She agreed to that at the time but dumped the vow without even a small gesture to what I asked.
There is something wrong with me in that I have lost 40# and still have no appetite. I'll likely croak from whatever ails me at present.
That does nothing for me to re-gain any physical attraction that I had for my wife. IT IS HARD TO EXPLAIN MY OLD STYLE TRUE LOVE FOR MY WIFE AND TO THEN SAY JUST HOW REVOLTED I am for fatso chicks.
the caps are from a bad keyboard The thoughts are from a twit.
Tapeworm
About 8 years ago when was obese (5'4" and 230 lb) my husband walked in to where I was stuffing myself with pizza waching tv. He turned off the tv and sat beside me and took my hand and basically said this: " you are my heart and soul and I love you no matter what happens but I am scared. When I see you like this I know you are putting your life in danger and won't live as long as you could. There is no one else in this world for me, you are the light of my life, please don't kill yourself in this way, it is killing me to watch. I will help you in everything you need. I will support you in everything do. There is nothing to fear because I will always have your back." That was my turning point. Yes the next few years were incredibly hard and I had to try many things to find out what was right for me. I found out mindless eating for me was numbing myself from some horrors in my past. So I joined a group with a therapist, brought out the horrors in front of all to see and worked through them. After a year of that work I never binge ate again! You see, your mind and your body work together...that was a revelation for me.
I guess what I am trying to say is that my husband didn't judge me. If he did I don't think I would be where I am today. When you're judged you either react negatively to being judged or try to numb yourself not to feel it's sting. Nothing good comes of it. May I suggest books by Geneen Roth for your wife ( she specializes in eating disorders in women... Very well written) Yeah, I'll admit to some hypocrisy when I see "fatso chicks" and I get angry but I am also quite empathetic to their situation and hope they find the path out from hell, perhaps a hell they can't even see themselves.
Miffed:-)
Fewer fat people live in Venice California and Santa Monica. We don't do fat out this way so I'm going to stop while I'm ahead.
it's not so complicated, but it has more to do with common sense.
don't eat fastfood. prepare meals at home, prepare them form real ingredients;; fresh meat, vegetables, potatoes, rice or pasta. use only fresh ingredients; no reedy made meals or parts of meals (sauces, etc.). these products are very unhealthy (salt, sugar, etc.). limit the use of meat, salt and sugar. don't drink sodas.
and some exercise; an hour of walking every day, some work in the garden, ride your bike, etc.
I am being surprised by the words I am reading here. The expecting I was having is that many of the peoples who are spending so many of their times here are having bellies that are much too bigness and they are also having asses that are having much fatness.
Man that chic is skinney!
Tyler,
Why are you wasting this space to talk about fat people. Who cares? If these idiots want to eat themselves to death, then it's their choice.
When ZH starts sounding like a left-wing rag including banging the drums for legislation to save people from themselves, well, then I hope Marla starts a new blogs because this one would have just sold out.
Now it has been proven yet again that a diet high in fat and low in carbs is good for you if you're a diabetic (and obviously also good for preventing diabetes in the first place). Even if such a diet had no other positive effects such as weight-loss (but it does!), this would still be sufficient reason to choose it. Diabetes is not only a personal tragedy, but when it's as common as in the US, it's also a huge burden on the public health system.
http://www.dietdoctor.com/new-study-high-fat-food-is-good-for-diabetics
This whole obesity phenomenon shows the power of self-delusion. Deep in their hearts, everybody knows what needs to be done to slim down: you simply have to take in less energy and spend more, which translated to plain English means you have to get off your ass and take up some sports, and eat less. That's all and it's so simple even Krugman should understand.
Yet when you talk to those people, few of them seem to understand it and virtually none would utter this 'inconvenient truth' aloud. They prefer to believe in magic: pills, diets etc.
Same like in the economy, actually. No hard choices, let's just take the printing pill and hope that would take care of things.
You wanna live, you bastards!? Then get the fuck up!
why-your-desk-job-slowly-killing-you:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39523298/ns/health-mens_health/t/why-your-de...
I've also worked more proteins and fruit n veg into my regular food and I've gotten more ripped... and I haven't done any weights in over a year!... And I still occassionally over-eat junk food like a dirty pig. Nurture / nature (genetics) plays a role but think of your overall well-being and things should fall into place if you have the discipline.
I have a total solution for everything ,.,., congress needs to pass a "special" tax ... due once a year, $10 for every pound of body weight over 150 ... without any exceptions .... football players would have no problem paying it, the rest of you will appreciate the motivation .... and it will help medicare ....
" For all the remarkable high-tech tools available to medicine, for all the billions of dollars in drug research, there’s still no highly effective medication to prevent or reverse obesity – why?"
Medication?
MEDICATION!!!??!?!?!
I know this may seem far fetched to some, but I have the perfect solution to the 'epidemic'.
STOP SHOVING SO MUCH DAMNED FOOD IN YOUR MOUTH!
It's amazing how easy it is to lose excess weight when you exert physical effor by WALKING, and cease eating 6,500 calories per day. Sure, the sweeteners and food additives aren't healthy, but lets be frank, that bag of chips and 2-Liter bottle of Mountain Dew you have every night sitting in front of the Boob-Tube are your biggest problems.
Medication... Sheesh, there's a shining example of what's wrong w/ this country! Instead of answering the hard question w/ truth and reality, we're looking for an excuse, or panacea to solve our woe's. How about you exercise some self-fucking-control, and stop shoving the shit into your face? Think that will make you lose weight? How about spending time exercising, walking around the block, or even just doing house/yard-work at night, instead of parking your gelatinous mass on the davenport every night?
Medication? Jesus, why do we need 'medication' to sovle a self-induced problem? This isn't something a pill is needed to solve. Education, self-control, and a little bit of common sense are essentially FREE, and have no deliterious side effects.
She is so fukin money!! Now, where are my glasses?
Yeah, nice pic...
Is that what Oprah looks like now?
Damn! She eat Delaware or what?!
I am another one for low/no carb and no processed food in order to lose adipose tissue. To my mind, in Britain and the US, this obesity epidemic is government-made through bombarding people with poisonous dietary advice.
It was well-known in the 19th century and early 20th century what made you fat. My grandmother, born in 1905, always said that to lose weight, you should cut out bread and potatoes, and her world was one where everything had to be made from scratch.
There are a few things I reckon we should consider with this issue.
1) It is not just the US and the UK. Obesity rates are alarming in Iran, Turkey and the Gulf, as well as other carb-heavy consumers in some developing countries: India, for example, has a growing obesity crisis amongst its Hindu middle-class.
2) The situation, to my mind, is not dissimilar to a kind of strange Malthusian crisis. One of the hidden problems behind this obesity issue, aside from the overconsumption of carbs and sugars, is the nutritional content of all food. There is concern about soil quality, which feeds through into veg and meat quality, even if you go grass-fed.
3) It's not just about food; it is about government policies and advice towards a whole range of lifestyle and cultural issues: sun exposure being another major problem.
4) There is evidence to suggest that the rates of mental health deterioration (childhood problems such as ADHD, autism etc as well as adult bipolar disorders etc) in many countries could be related to this modern diet, as could alcoholism and drug abuse. There is a woman in the US who has had startling results with putting alcoholics on gluten-free diets, and it is noticeable that countries with significant addiction problems also have significant malnutrition/vitamin/mineral problems (the US, the UK, Iran, alcoholism in the far northern Europe and VitD levels).
What I believe we are seeing is the start of a "die-out" caused by poor food quality and malnutrition, as well as other government policies that limit people's access to elements the body and mind needs. If escalating rates of obesity in the last thirty years continue over the next twenty years, it will wipe a significant percentage of the world's population out across a swathe of countries.
To my mind, this obesity crisis is a perfect illustration of "peak government" and the sheer failure of invasive post-war political and cultural approaches across the world. Governments are killing their people through fatal advice, guidelines, policies and laws, be those governments democratic or hardline Islamic authoritarian.
I think we are at a crux point, somewhat like the one the world faced after the first world war. Our old systems and institutions are being exposed for the failures they are and the poisonous ideas they have espoused with their extraordinary power -- across finance, economics, culture, government, the family, education, diet, medicine.
The tipping point is very close.
The old handle "beer gut" is actually right. Quit drinking, you'll lose weight. But then, how to deal with the pain??? Heroin.
The obesity epidemic is here to stay because the American Food Oligargy fattens on the garbage they put in our grocery stores for us to eat.
you know what cures obesity. POVERTY.
cannot afford gas and cannot afford food. you must walk and scrounge basic ingredients to cook them.
enough with the nonsense about self control. people do NOT have self control. if you are one of the cursed people who cannot enjoy walking regularly and eating moderate amounts of food without gorging, then you are screwed . there is no such thing as self control.
blame your stupid parents if they fed you garbage as kids. or blame yourself. or just blame the universe.
but there's no solution like poverty. and it's coming for you fast. so don't worry about nonsense 'solutions'. theres one very good solution and it's coming on its own. just wait on your fat ass-thighs for it.
Nope, the cheapest calorie sources are carbohydrates, and carbohydrates are uniquely fattening. A poor person rendered poorer will tend to substitute ever more cheap carbohydrate calories for fat and protein simplly because the latter cost more. He will get fatter and sicker for it, regardless of excercise!
Australia surpassed the US in obesity rates.
Sad. This is what the rest of the world has to look forward as the US model speads around the planet. Good luck!
Meds not required. http://www.ketogenic-diet-resource.com/ketogenic-diet-plan.html
documenting obesity will help to get better obese statistics.
Slimquick