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Suezeekay
New Member
| Joined: | 19 Aug 2007 |
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| Posts: | 2 |
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Posted: 19 Aug 2007 10:58 pm |
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My expertise in obesity lies in that fact that I am obese and have lived with this condition for many, many years. I've lost hundreds of pounds of fat and regained the same. I've looked around me and observed that other people are just like me when it comes to their emotions, they suffer like I have from loss, or worried over problems, BUT they don't overeat. It always seemed stupid to me to blame overeating on something that every human shares, esp since I don't suffer from it anymore than anyone else. I didn't grow up in a fat family so I didn't "learn" to overeat from them or learn to cope with emotions by overeating from them. I'm not stupid or lazy or indulgent. I exercise every week and have for years. So I'm always looking for some help. Ignorant people call it an excuse just because they have read all the opinions of others over the years. It's not an opinion that result from any scientific studies of their own. They are merely mimicing the same old unhelpful opinions because they don't know any better. So, although scientists are far away from any way to help obese people they have found some clues and even though it can't help me maybe it will help others who suffer from this sad condition; help them from living a life that they feel is out of their hands and under the control of something they don't understand.
newscientist.com/channel/being-human/drugs-alcohol/dn10210-obese-may-be-food-junkies-with-constant-cravings.html
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Peter
Founder of this forum
| Joined: | 24 May 2005 |
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| Posts: | 4180 |
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Posted: 20 Aug 2007 02:36 am |
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Suezeekay wrote:
My expertise in obesity lies in that fact that I am obese and have lived with this condition for many, many years. I've lost hundreds of pounds of fat and regained the same. I've looked around me and observed that other people are just like me when it comes to their emotions, they suffer like I have from loss, or worried over problems, BUT they don't overeat.
I gained my expertise the same way -- hundreds of pounds -- but I only went up and down about 20 at a time. Still, it was all-consuming.
About others not eating over their problems... true, but remember that many others act out in other ways. Alcohol, drugs, beating their kids...
Peter
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1seekspie
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 3 Sep 2007 07:48 pm |
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Yes, but the only thing worse then over-eating is abusing children!
Anyway, I think there are a lot of things that can contribute to obesity...like lack of self-control of course. I don't know how close we are to understanding why there's such a lack of self-control but there obviously is.
It's really sad, I'm from Colorado, the thinnest state in the United States, yet I see overweight people all the time. When I go to the store, I find that 60-80% of those people are overweight.
I think I have a theory of why people are over eating so much...subliminal/ regular advertising? The average child watches hundreds of thousands of commercials each year! Most five year olds do not watch CNN or HBO. They're watching things like Disney and Cartoon Network. You're not going to see and advertisement for a college or a male-enhancement product on Cartoon Network! Most of them are for toys and candy and popsicles. While there's been some attempts at advertisements that encourage exercise and eating right, a big enough impact has yet to be made.
That's why children are becomming so obese. Adults? Well they watch the shows with their kids sometimes. And they see all the resteraunt advertisements for things like casadillas, pies, and of course the famed: Fourth Meal from Taco Bell!!!
That's my theory anyway.
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abnormalapathy
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 6 Sep 2007 03:42 pm |
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1seekspie wrote: I think I have a theory of why people are over eating so much...subliminal/ regular advertising? The average child watches hundreds of thousands of commercials each year! Most five year olds do not watch CNN or HBO. They're watching things like Disney and Cartoon Network. You're not going to see and advertisement for a college or a male-enhancement product on Cartoon Network! Most of them are for toys and candy and popsicles. While there's been some attempts at advertisements that encourage exercise and eating right, a big enough impact has yet to be made.
That's why children are becomming so obese. Adults? Well they watch the shows with their kids sometimes. And they see all the resteraunt advertisements for things like casadillas, pies, and of course the famed: Fourth Meal from Taco Bell!!!
That's my theory anyway.
I see this everyday and it drives me a little nuts. I was always heavy, even as a kid, and I was active in sports--played softball and soccer, did gymnastics for a while, was a mascot (not quite a cheerleader)--but after every game, you know what we were given as snacks? Little Debbie cakes, or bags of chips and either soda or those boxed fruit drinks which note on the container that they only contain like 2% actual juice.
Yesterday, on the train, this woman gets on with 2 kids. The woman is obese and one of her children was definitely overweight while the smaller one just looked "pudgey". The larger kid was running and jumping around like a lunatic and that's when I noticed that he was drinking a 20-oz. Sprite! WTH??!?!? So it's not just the advertising to kids, although that's pretty widespread, but also parents giving it to their kids freely!
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1seekspie
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 6 Sep 2007 11:53 pm |
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Yes, parents should take responsibility for their child's weight themselves. If they are constantly buying chips, sweets, and soft drinks that the child will get ahold of, how interested are they going to be when the time comes to eat something that's actually healthy, like a nice vegetable dish?
Yes kids are picky but parents really should take charge as they're their kids' main supplier of food. Parents are also their kids' biggest influence, especially if they eat every meal with their child. Kids will often think like this:
"Oh, mommy eats chips! Chips taste good....I'll eat chips too!"
I'm not always the person to rely on for good memory, but I remember thinking things along those lines when I was little. My parents were always an influence on my eating. My dad loved chocolate ice cream, and my mom would occasionally go on store binges and bring home a bunch of...well...TASTY STUFF!!! If this wouldn't have stopped, I probably would become a heavy child myself...and I did become slightly overweight.
Luckily, my mom discovered "the atkins diet" and her sudden change to healthy eating created a slow, but steady domino affect that made my dad and I begin to change our ways as well.
So parents do have a huge influence...it's up to them whether it's good or not.
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Ohm
Senior Member
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Posted: 8 Sep 2007 09:56 am |
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The problem of propensity to gain weight is a hugely complicated one. I gain my expertise in this area because I just happen to have been overweight for more than 20 years (on and off) and I have various degrees in psychology.
I gain my expertise in being fat not just from my lifestyle but from my genetics too. My grandfather was Maori (from New Zealand) and I have a huge appetite - so large that, although I am rarely hungry when given free range for eating, I am very rarely full - I have never been in the position of not being able to eat another thing. I've always got room.
It would seem (and I do speak here from a scientific point of view) that "calories in and calories out" is not the whole story when it comes to weight gain nor weight loss. Polynesian islanders, Maoris, native Americans and various other genetically defined groups have been found to have a propensity to gain weight, given the right (or wrong, depends how you look at it) circumstances.
But there are some circumstances where everyone, without exception will gain weight.
It is not a level playing field. It's time to stop believing in fairies - get rid of our belief in a just world and deal with the world as it is, especially as it relates to us as individuals. We all have to cope with our own genetic heritage re metabolism, fat storing ability and propensity to gain weight. It's the hard cold truth. We can complain and feel hard done by, but it won't help. Lousy news, isn't it?
But there is something we can do about it - we can find a diet which is nutritionally sound and provides us with all our essential nutrients but sufficiently few calories to only just fulfill our energy requirements, we can increase our energy requirements by taking as much exercise as we can and then we need to just get on with it, because that is just about all we can do.
I've just re-read this and it sounds almost aggressive - it isn't meant to. I don't like it any more than anyone else. I wish I could be a slim person, but I have made food choices (both quantity and type) which have manufactured for me a huge mass of fat, which my body has stored for me. I did this to myself. I truly wish I hadn't, but I did. I have a genetic propensity to gain weight which was a benefit in evolutionary terms - my ancestors would have survived when their companions died in the cold or in famine situations because they did not store energy so efficiently as my predecessors - I am paying the price now for their benefits and my own unwise food choices.
I still think its the sticky end of the wicket!
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suenos
Distinguished Member
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Posted: 9 Sep 2007 04:32 am |
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About the "not a level playing field..." This is interesting to me because last night was a "girl's night out" which ended for me about 4 in the AM....naturally I wanted to sleep away the day today but I'd missed my Friday work-out and my gym is closed Sundays. So it was work-out today or miss 3 days in a row. So I'm in the gym this afternoon and the first thing I said when my work-out partner showed up was "I am soooo unmotivated to do this today"...and I pretty much keep that running theme through our entire work-out. I'm 100% certain that not a single one of my friends was even out of bed...let alone lifting weights at noon today!
But, the uncomfortable, seemingly unfair reality I've had to learn to accept is my body ....genetics, metabolism, yada yada... dictates that I gain weight easily and quickly unless I'm attentive to what I eat and even with good food choices I still have to exercise intensely 45-60 mins. a day 5-6 days a week.
Another reality is that I am not the kind of person who can have "just one bite" of certain foods and stop. Anything fried (especially potatoes whether chips or french fries) and most pastries (including commercially prepared breads, even whole grain) are on this list. Once the first bite is in my mouth, all resolutions and intentions fly out the window and the feed bag is on!
And still another reality is that my food inhabitations go completely out of the window if I've had more than 1-2 drinks. That third drink is the difference between going to Denny's afterwards and just picking at a salad to be companionable - or ordering a burger and fries!
So, I get to eat less food in general than I want to on an everyday basis. I have to be practically be a teetotaller, I have to haul my butt to the gym most every morning, even on days when motivation is totally non-existent, and there are some foods I love, that I simply cannot eat - at all -even as they are being munched on in my face! That's the reality for me. I can either rail at the general unfairness of it all - or I can just accept it and get on with it.
To the original poster I would say that sometimes we just have to stuggle to lose weight and maintain the loss by just accepting and learning to deal with our own "stuff" - even when we don't understand why others around us don't have to struggle so hard...like my "stuff" is having a propensity to binge eat, to overeat when I've been drinking, to go overboard on certain foods, etc.....at the end of the day I will still have to deal with these issues even if no one else around me does...
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