Media items about obesity

Creekside said:
One thing I've noticed is that it's getting hard to find basic foods. On my last trip, I wanted to try some lamb, and the store only had one package of chops and two larger cuts. I used to see frozen legs cut into chops, but couldn't find those now. I guess the space has been given over to higher-profit processed meals. Lots of other foods that used to be on the shelves are now gone. It's a cycle: more processed foods make people cook less, which means stores carry less basic stuff, which means that it's harder to cook meals.
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What do you mean by basic foods? I don't think lamb is that popular in N America? In the spring there is plenty of leg of lamb at my grocery store from Aussie and N Zealand.
 
DokaGirl said:
ETA #2: Of course one of the perennial problems with diets and weight loss for many is that when they stop dieting, then what? Have habits changed? Reports say in many cases the weight goes back on. To maintain the new body shape, the program, or some form of it, has to be continued indefinitely.
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Most people view "diets" for weight loss as something that is temporary which is why 95% of the time they don't work. To lose weight, and to keep it off, people have to make permanent life style changes. By changing their eating habits, and understanding that it is permanent - not temporary - it is possible to lose excess weight and keep it off. "Weight Watchers" (or WW as they are now known) is the most successful weight loss business, however, they aren't successful because people lose weight and keep it off. They are successful because after people put the weight back on, they usually sign up again to lose the weight over again. At the end of the day, the average weight loss of WW is only 6 lbs. Not very impressive.
 
Creekside said:
I've heard a lot of Canadians returning from trips to the US say that they were amazed at the size of American meals; much larger portions than served in Canadian restaurants. What's the caloric difference between a typical French meal and a typical US one?
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That is so true. American portions sizes can be ridiculously large. And, unfortunately, that trend has been spreading into Canada over time, though I don't think it is quite as bad. At least not yet.
 
Mij said:
What do you mean by basic foods?
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Things found in old recipes, such as flours or grains or seeds. Over the years I've noticed several such things disappear from the shelves.

It's not just foods. Ammonia used to be a common cleanser. I looked for some recently, and couldn't find any. Replaced by fancy brand-named cleansers.
 
Creekside said:
Things found in old recipes, such as flours or grains or seeds. Over the years I've noticed several such things disappear from the shelves.
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That could be the case in super markets.

I normally buy my grains, flours, nuts seed etc at the health food store or online.
 
TigerLilea said:
Most people view "diets" for weight loss as something that is temporary which is why 95% of the time they don't work. To lose weight, and to keep it off, people have to make permanent life style changes. By changing their eating habits, and understanding that it is permanent - not temporary - it is possible to lose excess weight and keep it off. "Weight Watchers" (or WW as they are now known) is the most successful weight loss business, however, they aren't successful because people lose weight and keep it off. They are successful because after people put the weight back on, they usually sign up again to lose the weight over again. At the end of the day, the average weight loss of WW is only 6 lbs. Not very impressive.
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Maintenance is the hardest. Why? Before one lists all the reasons, one need to remember that science hasn’t figured it out either. It can be a form of addiction similar to nicotine and we all know that for smokers, kicking the habit is very difficult. The difference here is that you still need to eat and constantly make the right decisions about what goes into your mouth.
 
TigerLilea said:
That is so true. American portions sizes can be ridiculously large. And, unfortunately, that trend has been spreading into Canada over time, though I don't think it is quite as bad. At least not yet.
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People would be surprised of the calorie content of the meals in restaurants. A typical meal would amount to 1500 calories, more than a daily intake for a full day. I wish it would be law that calorie content was added to each menu item. (Not that i eat out a lot)
 
The easy fix is not to put sugar, in it's many and modified/synthetic forms into everything.

It'd also be nice if they only used natural fats, and did not process the hell out of everything to make an extra 5p per tonne of product.

Maybe take it as a hint that if, after preparation, in the commercial taste kitchens, something tastes like &*(&, then maybe people should not be eating it, and not as an excuse to fill it up with other things to make it more palatable.

Food is supposed to have some form of nutrition, not just calories.

It appears that the vast majority of 'food', stuff sold as food anyway, is so far from being food, according to our senses, that they have to fill it with possibly 30-40 other non food things, merely to convince our bodies that it is indeed edible, enough to allow us to eat it anyway.

They also seem to have perfected the 'art' of making such things addictive, so addictive non food, that contains nothing but calories and other nice things that muck up out bodies - recipe for a world full of healthy thin people, not.

..and in answer to the above point of shops no longer selling things that always used to be 'food', and other things.

Even over the last 2 years it has become impossible for me to buy, from supermarkets online, many items that I have eaten for years - in a lot of cases simple, natural ingredients. Other things like cleaning products (e.g. white vinegar, a really cheap cleaning constituent) are either, in most cases, unavailable, or repackaged and super expensive (e.g. again white vinegar can now only be bought in 500ml extremely dilute form in a supermarket, for about £1, in 5L containers it's around £4, and that's a significant hike, when the supermarkets used ot sell it in larger containers it worked out under half that price).

Many things that can still be bought online, and not in supermarkets, any more, work out 5-10 times the price on amazon or health food shops compared with what supermarkets charged, when they sold it.
 
Milo said:
Maintenance is the hardest. Why? Before one lists all the reasons, one need to remember that science hasn’t figured it out either. It can be a form of addiction similar to nicotine and we all know that for smokers, kicking the habit is very difficult. The difference here is that you still need to eat and constantly make the right decisions about what goes into your mouth.
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Also the fact that once you become overweight or obese for long enough your body considers it the new set point and fights you to stay there, and even worse if you lose weight your metabolism is slower than what it was when you were originally at that lower weight, i.e. the “Biggest Loser” show study described these phenomena. Their basal metabolic rates were much lower after they lost weight compared to when they were originally at that lower weight before gaining, even years later!
 
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Milo said:
Me too, significant weight gain months before contracting EBV
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Also EBV, but I was very athletic when it hit me. I did 1000 calorie workouts regularly without a problem, I was slim and visibly muscular (not bodybuilder level though). I still developed ME. :(

(As a sidenote, naturally I started working out again almost right away, although I wasn't capable of doing the same intense workouts at all but my goal was to get back to that level. I'm a walking n=1 example that this is not a cure, it didn't cure me.)
 
No surprises here...

Title : Short-Term Energy Restriction Leads to Overall Increase in Appetite

Link : https://www.endocrinologyadvisor.co...intake-increased-exercise-increases-appetite/

The effects of short-term (4-day) energy restriction included a substantial increase in appetite (55% to 76%; P <.001) and a decrease in both satiety (42% to 19%; P <.01) and craving (49% to 38%; P <.01). This energy restriction also led to a 1-kg decrease in body weight (P <.001), a decrease of 0.5 kg/m2 (P <.001) in BMI, a decrease of 3.13 ng/mL in fasting leptin (P <.01), and an increase of 0.06 ng/mL (P <.05) in fasting orexin-A. A negative change in fasting leptin was predictive of a positive change in appetite and a negative change in satiety (P <.05), although controlling for body weight removed this predictive power. Change in appetite was not predicted by a positive change in fasting orexin-A. A decrease in body weight also predicted increased appetite, an effect not mediated by leptin, which suggests other factors like ghrelin could be mediators.
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https://www.thehastingscenter.org/what-is-preventable-about-obesity/
The suggestion that obesity is a preventable disease has been weighing heavily on my mind ever since I read a recent article in the Hastings Center Report. The article claims to focus on “ethical, policy, and public health concerns” related to anti-obesity medications, but there is a strong undercurrent of bias throughout. As an endocrinologist who specializes in medical weight management, my clinical experience informs my understanding that obesity is almost never entirely preventable, but bias against those with obesity certainly is.
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Or the many women who have not changed a single thing about their food intake or exercise and gained 25-to-30 pounds during menopause? How about all those people with childhood obesity or a strong family history of obesity for whom I have ordered genetic testing that identified no specific genetic mutation to explain obesity?

There are so many more: people with severe asthma, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, or other autoimmune diseases who become at least 8-to-10 pounds heavier each time they use steroids to treat a disease flare. Those whose neural networks are such that food noise always plays on very high volume, and those who tell me, “I don’t know what it feels like to feel full.” And, importantly, those who need to take weight-promoting atypical antipsychotics for depression, mood stabilization, or psychotic illness.
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The existence of expensive, often very effective medications to treat obesity, including the GLP1 receptor agonists (Saxenda and Wegovy) and the dual GLP1/GIP agonist (Zepbound), may, ironically, contribute to another angle of bias. If you don’t understand how many people lack access to these medications (everyone with Medicare, many with Medicaid or commercial insurance, and all the uninsured), and that a significant minority of people do not tolerate these medicines or lose much weight when taking them, you might go along with the social media/lay press narrative that weekly injections provide a complete cure for everyone with obesity. They do not. With respect to social justice, the government should consider applying price caps to cure the sky-high cost of these medications, as it has for insulin.
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There is a final way in which bias against obesity is literally hardwired into medical care: the ICD 10 coding system. I am urged to bill using HCC (hierarchical condition category) codes, as they glean the highest reimbursement from insurance. Fact: these prized HCC billing codes are pejorative, insulting, and physiologically reductive: E66.01, “morbid obesity due to excess calories,” and E66.09, “other obesity due to excess calories.” Non-HCC codes, which report BMI numerically without qualifiers, are reimbursed at a much lower rate. What is preventable about obesity? Personal and systemic bias.
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The Hastings Center often has thought-provoking essays on bioethics topics.
 
Thanks for posting that one @Hutan

Some of the medications people with ME/CFS get prescribed for pain/sleep have weight gain as a side effect,
Definitely poor sleep is a contributor to overeating, and as PEM makes my sleep even worse it also affects my food intake with carb cravings.
 
Ironic considering that most only really do fitness coaching. You'd think they would actually see this as some sort of positive, two birds with one stone and all. But of course the whole thing is a sham so they don't actually follow through with the premise of what they do. Really says a lot about how much of a grift the whole wellness thing is, that even for things where exercise is supposed to be very effective, they won't bother, in part because deep down they must know this isn't about fitness and that they won't be of any help here, that they won't actually be reconditioning anyone.

It'd be like car mechanics who only accept to work on problems that anyone with a wrench and the most basic knowledge of cars can do themselves. Anything more complicated and they're completely useless and they know it, but still pretend that they got this fully under control. What an absolute giant scam.
 
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