Is Obesity Incurable?

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I don't understand how the "incurable" studies also fit with our knowledge of increasing obesity rates. Is it that our lifestyle allows more people to get big and then they are stuck that way?

And I'm a bit dubious of going "Weight Watchers doesn't work, ergo weight loss is impossible!" The studies would be more interesting if they said what made the few success different from the rest (e.g. long term diet control vs short term "dieting"), or if there seemed to be nothing at all.

IIRC in the Atkins diet debate they showed the same pattern of going back up to original weight, but I believe this was contrasted to the recommended diet control. Let me do more research.

 

[mike3]

It started out as irrational, but now if your kids are out alone on suburban streets, they will be the only ones. It's kind of like swimming in the ocean alone vs in a crowd of hundreds when there is a hungry shark about.

Yes, when I was a kid, people didn't think that way. We had a school playground with swings, slides, and monkey bars set into asphalt. Some kids got stitches every few weeks, and some kids broke bones. Nobody thought it was a big deal, and nobody would have even thought of suing for something like that. Years later, some kid fell or was pushed off a slide and died, so a few lawsuits in those early years may have been helpful, but we've definitely gone too far in the other direction.

So what can one do nowadays for the health of one's kids, to prevent them from becoming obese?

 

[mike3]

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/


I hope this answers the OP's question!

Huh? It was written BY the OP!!!!!!

 

[mike3]

This makes me wonder: could it be that the key to developing a "cure" to obesity would be to take a neurological approach -- to go after whatever it is in the brain that generates the hunger impulse?

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

This makes me wonder: could it be that the key to developing a "cure" to obesity would be to take a neurological approach -- to go after whatever it is in the brain that generates the hunger impulse?

Chemotherapy ?

 

[Horatius]

Huh? It was written BY the OP!!!!!!

Hence the .

This makes me wonder: could it be that the key to developing a "cure" to obesity would be to take a neurological approach -- to go after whatever it is in the brain that generates the hunger impulse?

That would be a good step. Another would be to find drugs that could affect metabolism, to increase the amount of calories you burn just doing regular stuff. The doctor who ran my program I mentioned earlier has found that about 50% of people who go into ketosis start burning energy at elevated rates. Ketosis is hard to get into, and stay in, and has bad long term health effects, so if we could produce this effect in a controlled manner, it would solve the problem for a lot of people.

 

[epepke]

I believe it works both ways. I think thinner people find it easier, and less hassle to move around, and so they do it with less emotional, mental, and physical effort. But with the addition of just a few pounds, it's suddenly more work in all three senses to have to walk, let alone run or ride a bike.

I would tend to disagree. Or, at least, it isn't a universal experience. Admittedly, when I was pushing 300 pounds there were a few problems, but I could still walk for miles, ride a bicycle uphill, dance a lot, and carry things.

Not too long ago, I was down to 183, and I was a wreck. I couldn't walk far. My legs kept giving out when I climbed the stairs. I looked like a concentration camp victim.

Now I'm just around 200, due to lots of protein powder, and I'm still not really looking forward to doing the leg presses I need to get back up a bit.

I'm best at around 225, which according to my BMI puts me at the border of obese. I know that most people wouldn't consider 200 pounds thin, but it's way too thin for me.

 

[nchammer326]

Really. Every kid in town was there. Two acres or more of wide open grass. Nice weather and free watermelon. Enough cloud cover that it wasn't too hot. Toys to play with and a thousand adults to call for help if needed. An ambulance was parked on the far side of the parking lot, just in case.

But those kids weren't allowed to play. Everyone expected them to stay with their families, on the blankets or in lounge chairs. No running, no tag, no horseplay. For some of them, it might as well have been a classroom -sit quiet, watch, be quiet, sit still, don't move, hands where I can see them, put the ball away....

No wonder the entire generation is obese. Now how will these kids who have never been free to move and play really get enough exercise later to keep off extra pounds? They don't even know what "enough exercise" is. They don't know what it is to run the 500 yard dash four times against four different opponents in a single afternoon's play. Is it even possible to learn that later? If you can't play hard when you're a kid, when can you?

Ha ha ha wow. Cool nostalgia/anecdote, bro.

Yes, the reason this country has an obesity problem is because some parents weren't letting their kids run around at a 4th of July fireworks show. This is only time kids can exercise because youth sports and gym class don't exist. It has nothing to do with how our bodies work or our food intake.

Seriously, that was some Glenn Beck levels of bull.

(Also, I don't what planet you grew up on, but a 500 yard dash was not my idea of fun as a kid.)

 

[DragonLady]

Yes, the reason this country has an obesity problem is because some parents weren't letting their kids run around at a 4th of July fireworks show. This is only time kids can exercise because youth sports and gym class don't exist. It has nothing to do with how our bodies work or our food intake.

Seriously, that was some Glenn Beck levels of bull.

I call 'em as I see 'em.

(Also, I don't what planet you grew up on, but a 500 yard dash was not my idea of fun as a kid.)

<shrug>

My siblings were track stars.

 

[Modified]

Ha ha ha wow. Cool nostalgia/anecdote, bro.

Yes, the reason this country has an obesity problem is because some parents weren't letting their kids run around at a 4th of July fireworks show. This is only time kids can exercise because youth sports and gym class don't exist. It has nothing to do with how our bodies work or our food intake.

Seriously, that was some Glenn Beck levels of bull.

(Also, I don't what planet you grew up on, but a 500 yard dash was not my idea of fun as a kid.)

How old are you? Or if you are old enough to have seen the changes, did you grow up in a city maybe? The differences in suburban kids' activity levels from the early 70s (when I was a kid) to today are plain and obvious to anyone who's lived through that period, unless all those kids are running around inside where we can't see or hear them. Of the 50 or so families in my neighborhood with kids, there are two whose kids play outside regularly - driveway basketball, bicycle, tennis in the street, etc.

Gym class and one organized sport at a time aren't much exercise for a kid.

 

[Roboramma]

When I was a kid in the summer I'd get up early, have breakfast, and then either go knock on my friend's door, or a friend would come knock on mine. We'd go outside, find lots of other kids to play with, and run around all day. The only rule my parents had was that we had to come home for lunch and I had to be back home for dinner by the time the sun went down. This was in Canada, so that's pretty late. Sometimes I missed the sun-down deadline and got a talking to, and every day I wished the sun would stay out a little longer.

During the school year, things weren't all that much different: I recall immediately after school I'd go home, drop off my stuff, and then within half and hour be outside playing with my friends again. In the winter we'd have snowball fights and make snow forts, or play street hockey, in the spring we'd run around playing tag or cops and robbers or maybe a game of baseball in the park. In the summer we'd have water fights, collect insects (bees were my favourites, but caterpillars were also a lot of fun), and climb trees. In the fall we might ride our bikes around the neighborhood, or do anything else that we could do given the weather.

That was until I turned 9, when my family moved away, and we ended up in a neighborhood with significantly fewer kids. I spent a lot more time inside, and when I was playing with my friends it was more often games of D&D or computer games than running around outside.

 

[Virus]

It's not incurable. Just get your fat ass to the gym.

 

[DragonLady]

When I was a kid in the summer I'd get up early, have breakfast, and then either go knock on my friend's door, or a friend would come knock on mine. We'd go outside, find lots of other kids to play with, and run around all day. The only rule my parents had was that we had to come home for lunch and I had to be back home for dinner by the time the sun went down. This was in Canada, so that's pretty late. Sometimes I missed the sun-down deadline and got a talking to, and every day I wished the sun would stay out a little longer.

Sounds like my childhood, too. I had to be home at dusk for dinner, and that was just about it. We played those same games, and spent hours and hours and hours just enjoying being alive. We were thin, healthy, fit and athletic...and took it entirely for granted.

When I was about nine I started a new school in a city somewhere back east, and was amazed there were girls there who could not do a single pull-up! But that was a real exception; everywhere else kids were kids and we did not spend our time sitting around much at all. Being sent to a room for a day was unendurable punishment -the sounds of all the kids outside enjoying themselves, the tedium of a soap opera on TV, the grownups talking about bills and politics.... I think about that now and it all comes back. I would have rather been out digging ditches than staring at the walls waiting to be told I could come out.

That, despite the fact I've always been an avid reader, and enjoyed plenty of quiet, restful time. It just seems like things have reversed now. Quiet and still and stiff seem to be expected, and loud, active and free seem to be frowned on.

 

[The Don]

It's not incurable. Just get your fat ass to the gym.

Thank you for your contribution but it's a wee bit more complicated than that.

If you consume 10,000 calories a day then it doesn't matter how much time you spend in the gym. If you're so obese that you cannot leave the house then you're unable to get to the gym. If the cause of your overeating is psychological then unless those psychological issues are addressed or managed then it's unlikely that the necessary lifestyle changes are going to be made.

If everyone took a similarly narrow view of how to manage obesity then yes, it would be incurable.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Well, you guys' idillic childhoods sound like mine, and I was born in 89 .

But I've read studies confirming the decline in childhood physical activity to substandard levels. I can look them up again if needed.

 

[Modified]

When I was a kid in the summer I'd get up early, have breakfast, and then either go knock on my friend's door, or a friend would come knock on mine. We'd go outside, find lots of other kids to play with, and run around all day. The only rule my parents had was that we had to come home for lunch and I had to be back home for dinner by the time the sun went down. ...

That brings back good memories. We'd often be fishing, catching frogs or turtles, damming up a stream, or just trudging through the woods, maybe over a mile from home (this was in the outer suburbs that bordered woods and farmland along a river) when we'd hear the distant shout of one of our mothers calling us for dinner. Sometimes we'd pretend not to hear. Eating was something we looked on as a chore, an annoyance that interrupted our play.

 

[Vorticity]

One of the things one finds when looking into diet vs. exercise from a calories burned/consumed point of view is that there is simply no comparison. Exercise is almost irrelevant.

To wit:

It's not incurable. Just get your fat ass to the gym.

A 180 pound man who lifts weights for a full hour burns around 250 calories. This is less than the number of calories in a single Snickers bar.

Another example: To burn off the calories in the aforementioned bagel with cream cheese, the same 180 pound man must run (briskly) for a full half hour.

 

[The Don]

The trouble with anecdotes is that they are almost all atypical. I grew up in a small town in the North East of England with access to woods and fields, a tennis club of which I was a member, a golf club of which I was a member and parents who thought that I should walk or cycle any distance less than 10 miles.

If I'd grown up in a city then maybe my experiences would have been very different. Certainly contemporaries in London seemed to spend much more time just hanging out on street corners. The only exercise they got was running from the police .

I also spent an inordinate amount of time reading, watching TV and playing Runequest when I was in my mid teens. Apart from the golf and tennis and walking the mile to and from school (uphill and into the wind both ways) I probably didn't get that much exercise.

Thinking about my friends' children both in Bristol and out here in Wales, the country kids are as active as you'd expect and the town kids find it more tricky. These parents are probably not typical either so who knows ?

 

[marplots]

One of the things one finds when looking into diet vs. exercise from a calories burned/consumed point of view is that there is simply no comparison. Exercise is almost irrelevant.

A 180 pound man who lifts weights for a full hour burns around 250 calories. This is less than the number of calories in a single Snickers bar.

Another example: To burn off the calories in the aforementioned bagel with cream cheese, the same 180 pound man must run (briskly) for a full half hour.

So what you're saying is that if instead of sitting here and typing in the forum while I enjoy a cream cheese slathered bagel and a snicker bar, if I were to run to the gym, lift weights for a half-hour and then run back, the difference would be close to a thousand calories?

I was taught that exercise has other benefits, primarily reduced cravings for food and improved mental health. I'll accept this as myth if it is.

 

[Pup]

One of the things one finds when looking into diet vs. exercise from a calories burned/consumed point of view is that there is simply no comparison. Exercise is almost irrelevant.

Yes. The idea of exercising to lose weight doesn't make sense to me, either in theory or practice.

Unless you're keeping exact track of calories, just an unnoticed amount of extras will easily undo what subjectively feels like a lot of exercise. The only way I've ever been able to lose or maintain weight is by restricting calories.

For what it's worth, I'm apparently one of the rare exceptions. I was always "normal" weight, between 145-150 lbs in adulthood, until I gained up to 169 in my late thirties. About age 40, I went on a diet just by eating less and lost back down to my normal range, and have been there ever since.

So that's about 11-14% of my bodyweight, not much admittedly, but lost once and kept off for 12 years, hopefully indefinitely.

I need to eat much less now than I did when younger, and that's why I gained the weight, since apparently my metabolism changed but my eating didn't. It's no fun not eating what I want, but I've decided it's more fun to be not overweight.