The real cause of Obesity

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Your body may slow down the metabolism, so weight loss with be minimized. If you are really stressed you might retain more water via cortisol mechanisms. Often when people diet, they lower their activities in ways they do not realize and notice, so this offsets some of the calories reduction in food. Depression can lead to overweight but it’s going to be through reduced movement, which is really common with depression, and comfort or poor eating - no energy to prepare decent food.

People tend to estimate their calories incorrectly and often significantly.

If you are very small and have an extreme metabolic slowdown, your weight loss might be tiny. Which could lead to frustration. Nothing seems to be happening. But no, if you are at 1000 calories each day and maintain that you’re going to lose weight. Severe dieting can also slow the process down. You lose muscle more than fat or at a higher ratio than you would in a more modest diet. Loss of muscles reduces calorie burning. Muscles burn calories more than fat does. And then the stress and water retention can affect the weight even if fat is leaving.

Moderate calorie reduction tends to work better. Couple that with exercise and you’ve got what generally works for most people. Changes are slow. Skipping meals - intermittent fasting type stuff - can work for some people, but it can create instability for others and lead to binges or ‘well, I didn’t have lunch so I can…..’ type decision making and the estimating calorie errors come in.

Diet sodas are generally bad in a variety of ways.

That’s not stable. You can’t keep gaining weight like that without serious health problems coming. This would lead to temporary fluctuations. Just high salt meals can.

There are lots of things one can do to change habits that make it easier to maintain diets for the time needed. Changeology, John Norcross. For example. It’s not a diet book, it’s a practical guide to how to change habits. He cites all the research that backs up his suggestions. And which shows that will power alone is a very poor method. But hey, to do what he suggests is not easy and even requires some social courage, since involving other people is one of the steps. There are other possible factors that can make it hard for a person to sustain a diet and/or higher levels of activity. Childhood trauma, depression, etc. But there are ways to deal with these also.

If you can find activities that burn calories that you actually love to do, that’s very helpful. Because when you force activities that you don’t really like, you may reach an unconscious or conscious I’ve had it and it drops out.

But you drop calories and at least maintain activity levels, you’re gonna lose weight.

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Your body reacts to diet soda with artificial sweeteners the same way it reacts to sugar or refined carbs. Try intermittent fasting. Try to get to a 16:8 or 18:6 schedule. You’ll not only lose weight, but it will also help with anxiety and depression.

This seems to support the “weight gain is not caused by merely calories” thesis.

This seems to suggest that somehow the 0 calorie soda facilitates weight gains, despite being, well… 0 calories.

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Might be 1500 calories a day for me. The 1000 calories was just meant as an example.

I noticed i feel tired all the time and lost interest in videogames. I don’t play videogames anymore, I just watch videos of people complaining about videogames. Browsing xbox causes me stress cause they force intrusive ads on the home screen, and the store is degenerate looking and not wholesome looking. The xbox does not feel like my console, my property, it feels more like visiting a filthy hoarders nest. Powering on the xbox makes me feel all creeped out, instead of comforting, its supposed to be a comforting escapism.

Something similar happened with Youtube a few weeks ago. I was browsing for ASMR to relax, and then some of the suggestions it shows me are videos of disgusting maggots… totally destroyed the vibe. Youtube is controlled by mindless algorithms, and our capitalist society is forlorn garbage. Garbage people are everywhere.

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That, calorie deficit first and foremost. Then, you can give advice that will be useful for some, not useful for others. For example, for some it’s better just to say the calorie deficit, and the coma patient idea.

Yes, there was a list of choices. I didn’t imply morality - you are wrong. You got confused with the comparison because it shares what is the same and differs in what is different, as in any comparison. That way, you can identify better what is shared. You are confusing the thing they share in common with what they don’t, and suppose that all is context, and it isn’t.

Some people are aided by meetings with friends, some people are aided by lack of meetings with friends. You can’t know beforehand. Some people are aided by lack of knowledge. I’m not interested in advising people to get fitter as a business venture

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Yes if you are brain dead, literally, or if you are then going to be more braindead out of the lack of calories

You seem to be looking for excuses. There are no excuses, only caloric deficit.

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Haha, this made me laugh.

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@futureone You’ve already been told why ‘diet’ soda is terrible for weight loss. As bad as sugar. The artificial sweeterners are a poison and fuck up the liver, while increasing cancer risk. If your liver isn’t functioning properly then you won’t lose weight unless you essentially starve yourself, which then slows the metabolism. Turn on the cold tap and drink the stuff that comes out of it for fuck sake, or are you afraid of ‘poisoning’ yourself with the fluoride? :roll_eyes:
You’ve been given good advice, but all you do is argue and make excuses. Stop whining about your weight then. No one cares if you are fat.

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I drink mostly water and unsweetened tea, but occasionally I’ll have a Coke as a treat. But we didn’t evolve to drink liquid sugar.

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  1. Soda and Caffein

    You are not understanding what is being said. Your body is not designed to process the shit crap chemicals that make us soda. 0 calories is irrelevant when then only thing your body can do with soda is turn it literally into visceral fat. Sugar (cane sugar) is also a poison, though not int he way humans see things as a poison. Your bodies response to sugar is to turn it from the current chemical state it enters your body (which is unusable in even small quantities, into visceral fat which it can use for energy. In tiny amounts your body processes sugar like nitrous oxide in a car. At the expense of everything else. So while there is sugar in your blood, your body literally will not burn a single calorie.

    Even aspartame, which is used in 0 sugar drinks is carcinogenic in nature. Your body turns everything it can’t process into fat. it literally takes what it can’t use and transforms it into something it can use then stores it away.

    The rest of the stuff in soda is turned into visceral fat and stored for later use.

    Drinking Soda is one of the absolute worst things you can do while trying to lose weight. The same is true for juice drinks or any drink with a lot of sugar in it. Sugar is also addictive, just like caffeine. Unlike caffeine however sugar has 0 benefits to your health.

    ~ Caffeine is only beneficial to male’s health wise (as it increases your testosterone level, metabolism and neurological processes in men), unless it is used for headache relief. It is detrimental to women and in fact a poison to females as the female body lacks the ability and process to use it for anything beyond the “energy high”, for a woman caffeine mine as well be cocaine as it is literally nothing but a stimulant drug. But even in this case it is better to imbibe caffein from coffee then from soda due to the literal toxic nature of soda to your body.

  2. Calories and Metabolism.

    Although we use the term calories you need to understand that while the science is true the methodology is bullshit.

    It is true that if you eat less calories then you burn you will lose weight.
    It is false that 3000 Calories equals 1 LBS.

    Physics are Physics. A 3 ounce candy (or whatever brownie?) can not have 1 lbs worth of weight gain. Even though many sweets are often labeled to have exceedingly high calorie counts. These labels are absolute lies. I wont list the math here but in no realm of reality can 1 ounce be = to 1 lbs. etc. So read those Calorie labels with a grain of salt.

    That whole area of the weight loss industry mine as well be hocus pocus for all the truth of it.

    Common sense is important here. A good diet is one where your are never full. Full is your body telling you you have eaten too much. You should know and learn what is and is not healthy just by looking at it. Your body already knows. And when you look at that cheese burger, somewhere in the back of your mind your body is going I don’t want that. But because you are addicted to the salt, sugar, and other chemical mixtures in it, your conscious mind goes “I want”.

    A medium rare steak, with a salad is a far healthier and better choice. Or even stirfry (which you cook yourself with olive oil).

    ~ Calories are not as important as “what” you put into your body. With regular exorcise, you can easily eat 5k calories a day. Or more, and still lose weight and stay in shape.

    ~ Metabolism, requires cardiovascular endurance, and lean muscle as well as a food that will boost your testosterone (if your a male) Like certain types of Coffee. Running will not help you lose weight directly. Running will however increase your cardiovascular health, which will increase your endurance and thus increase your metabolism, which will make you lose weight…. Every see a fat marathon runner? no? Wonder why….

    It is not always about burning calories, your body is a machine, and like any machine, you need to make sure every part is working correctly.

    1. On your Theory. You are both correct, and wrong.

    ~ Most Americans are not warrior breeds. Most Americans are prey, who choose the lazy path in life or the easy way to get something done.

    Yes, if people did not have cars and walked/ran everywhere this would not be an issue except for the very wealthy. (as it was in the past).

    Fully 70% of Americans do not even exorcise at all, and of that 70%, 50% are Obese due to overeating, and laziness, also of that 70% Most of them have no desire to move at all unless absolutely necessary so they rarely have high metabolism’s and thus do not burn fat and visceral fat. Or always have sugar or some other stimulant in their system. Thus preventing their body from burning it’s fat stores and instead constantly storing more.

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The Demon-Haunted world

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Eat clean, exercise, drink water, supp up, and you can’t go wrong.

Futureone’s symptoms are due to a wide-spectrum nutritional deficiency, which he needs to address.

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Would ‘obesity’ being kind of a discussed topic in philosophy point towards something along the historic evolution of philosophical argument?

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Sure.. but in an ideal world there would be no obesity to speak of.. I look out upon the world and grieve, for what it once was/could/should have been.
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We should be doing, as well as philosophising, when it comes to our physical heath and well-being.. because many things can/will become irreversible, over time.

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The Onset of Obesity is a direct symptom of both Technology and economic national wealth.

Poor countries, with low technology have almost no obesity problems.

Why?

~ Technology provides means to make jobs and life much less physically demanding. Your body is literally a biomechanical machine, adaptive and designed to survive extreme conditions. When technology is developed that lets you essentially push a button in a factory, rather then actually doing the physical labor you stop using your muscles daily and putting strain on them, and thus you grow weaker.

Take that to a societal level, and you get a bunch of fat weak people.

~ Economically, the US is the powerhouse of the world. What we consider to be “poverty” in the US, is in many countries considered to be “wealthy”. This is a fact, and I encourage anyone who doubt’s this to go to some 3rd world countries and stay for a few weeks and see for yourself what poverty actually looks like.

Here’s some images from the Philippine’s for example, and understand these photos represent the VAST majority of people in that country. The nice cities and all that crap? Less then 25% of the population live there. The other 75% live in absolute squaller even our Homeless in the US do not experience.

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These Images are the Life and Reality of most of Philippine citizens. Never take for granted what you have in the US. Because if not for some twist of fate, this could easily have been you.

~ Along with economic prosperity comes laziness. when you can simply order food brought right to your door, you do not go out, you do not travel, you do not walk or really move much. Everything is easy to obtain and get if you want it a phone call or a few clicks and it is delivered directly to you, anywhere in the US.

That is why most citizens of western countries such as the US are overwhelmingly obese.

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No, it’s calories in are more than calories burned. That’s it. End of discussion. Now everyone will just give up in the West because you are implying causes beyond calories in being higher than calories burned. They will all give up if you tell them this. People makes choices about whether calories in are too high or burning calories are to low. Don’t confuse the issue. (this isn’t really aimed at you The Watcher, pardon my use of your good addition to the thread post)

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So what are you saying here? That living in squalor is good for your health? That everyone should just ‘put up with their lot’ because there is someone even worse off? How far down the ‘chain’ do people need to be before they have a ‘right’ to complain? Humans complain.They are dissatisfied. If they weren’t like that then we would still be living in caves.

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Yes, but the way the body burns those ‘calories’ is very complex and many things can affect it. Plus, if it were that simple then you would have to get the balance exactly right, ALL the time, or you would be constantly either losing weight or putting it on. What if you always ‘misjudged’ it and only had a ‘calorie deficit’ every day? Would you eventually end up a skeleton?

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My post was satire and not of The Watcher’s post.

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Oh really, ever been to Mexico?

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Yes, it was an attempt at satire to what I wrote! Is obesity a symptom of wealth? Maybe. Is it a consequence? It is not