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At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? We all know the secret to not being obese. Asking the government to step i

• zitterbewegung 10y ago
  There is a genetic component to being overweight that you are overlooking. It's not just eating less .
  • quotemstr 10y ago
    You're correct about there being a genetic component to obesity. Unfortunately, it's also the case that it is just "eating less" --- physics has no special case for 21st century humans. The way to square this circle, and what's particularly difficult for people in this society, is to accept that that there is a genetic component to this behavioral issue. We'd prefer very much going around believing that behavior is somehow disjoint from genetics. That just isn't true, and as long we continue believing it's true, we're going to make bad public policy.
    • soneca 10y ago
      What you eat make harder or easier to eat less. It is not just genetics and it is not just self control. If you eat more fat and no carbs is much easier to eat less calories in total.
      • quotemstr 10y ago
        But carbs are delicious. That's a huge problem. Seriously. You can't just ignore how delicious carbs are if you want to actually change behavior.
        • soneca 10y ago
          The problem exists in the first place because carbs are delicious and cheap. But sugar in particular has an addiction characterisc. Once you go some time without it, you don't miss it as much anymore. And fat is also delicious.
  • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    So, something is happening to our genes to make the percentage of obese jump over a dozen pcnt in a generation?
• philipov 10y ago
  The way mobs and politics work, no, it appears that in aggregate, we do not have agency. That is the tragedy of the commons.
• minikites 10y ago
  It's not childish, it's how a society works. It's the same concept behind seatbelt laws. Not wearing a seatbelt "should" be an individual choice but individuals not wearing a seatbelt in aggregate is a net negative for society so we legislate their use.
  • lacampbell 10y ago
    I think wearing a seatbelt is a great idea, and if I'll refuse to drive a car unless all my passengers are wearing their seatbelt first. My partner is from a country where it's not enforced at all, and I have insisted she always wear a seat-belt when I noticed she didn't wear them routinely. I personally rarely drink alcohol, don't smoke, take drugs etc etc. I still don't think any of the above should be forbidden. I've found it's a good idea to me - cheaper, better for my health, better for my mental state. Somehow I'm able to follow this without the state compelling me to do so. Should we ban alcohol as well - as that is how "society works"? It does a lot of harm in many countries. I don't understand why every good idea has to be enforced with a law. (As an aside, I'm from a country where bicycle helmets are mandatory, despite their dubious safety benefits, and the fact as soon as the law was introduced cyclist numbers plummeted).
    • minikites 10y ago
      I think alcohol is a thorny example because of status quo bias stretching back thousands of years. Based on what I know of the physical harms of alcohol, I think if it was invented today it would be illegal.
    • xg15 10y ago
      You can view it from the other side, though. if the market is skewed in such a way that most food readily available contains e.g. unnecessary amounts of sugar and you need specific skills, knowledge and mental resolve (not to mention money) to not eat unhealthy food, I believe a bit influence to re-balance things is justified. Consumer-choice and personal responsibility is a nice thing as long as that choice isn't systematically undermined by market forces.
    • matthewmacleod 10y ago
• krisroadruck 10y ago
  Do we all know? I currently weigh 270lbs (and climbing) and I * Don't consume soda or sugary drinks of any kind * Go on 3 mile walks 3-4x weekly * Have switched to soylent 100% of meals to make calorie counting dead simple * Recently cut out alcohol too And yet pounds are adding on not coming off. I've been gaining about 10-15lbs a year every year since I hit 30 after being at a stable weight of 170lbs for all of my teens and 20s and none of the adjustments I've made have had ANY impact on it what-so-ever. So maybe its not just "eat less, fatty". Maybe there is something else going on?
  • piva00 10y ago
    So drop more calories, you are still eating above what you are expending. Like I said in another comment: our bodies aren't supernatural things that ignore thermodynamics, it's impossible for your body to create fat without spare energy consumed. I have dropped weight only through calories counting, I've done cycles of bulk/cut while weightlifting, dropping weight boils down to "calories in -> calories out", we might not have a very good model of this, we might be overlooking a multitude of variables that control energy expenditure but we can't create fat from nowhere, we need to consume and have spare energy to store it. It's not easy but it is simple. Again: I'm not saying our models for calculating TDEE or how energy restriction affects our body completely but if you are expending more calories than you are eating you are going to consume fat to create energy. Try this: drop how many calories you are eating by another 100~200kcal/day for a week, see if the trend changes (a moving average works). If not, drop another 100~200kcal/day and watch for a week. Being STRICT is the "not easy" part.
  • atopuzov 10y ago
    Have you tried keto? Works for me™
  • mjfl 10y ago
    Fat is approximately 3500 calories per pound. If you are gaining 15 pounds per year you are overeating by 3500x15/365 calories per day. If you would like to instead lose 30 pounds per year, reduce your caloric intake per day by 3500x15/365x3 = 432 calories/day.
• quotemstr 10y ago
  > At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? This question touches on some very deep and controversial ideas kicking around in the current conversation. The question of whether we have an inherent "human nature", a biological substrate that informs our capabilities and behavior, touches on everything from education to tech employment. I don't want to debate the subject generally. But can we agree, for the specific case of food consumption that 1) we have very strong impulses that are difficult to consciously resist; that 2) these impulses originate in biology; that 3) the existence of exceptional willpower is a mark of exceptional self-discipline, a level not practical to achieve for most; and that 4) advertisers prey on the difficulty most people experience in controlling their food behavior?
  • revelation 10y ago
    I'd argue it is human nature to sleep in every morning, yet a significant portion of the population defies that just fine. You can make a habit of most anything, hunger or overeating.
    • prostoalex 10y ago
      It's pretty hard to starve oneself and be a functioning member of the society at the same time. Any task requiring physical or mental energy will be lacking, and body will quickly resort to calorie conservation by falling into permanently fatigued state.
  • sn9 10y ago
    > 3) the existence of exceptional willpower is a mark of exceptional self-discipline, a level not practical to achieve for most; and that I don't agree that this is what's going on. People don't avoid obesity by exceptional willpower. They just have healthy eating habits, usually ones formed during childhood. Likewise, overcoming obesity and returning oneself to a healthier weight that one can maintain requires changing habits and one's relationship with food. Habit formation and modification can be difficult, but it's sufficiently well understood that it can be implemented. The difficulty is getting information into people's hands about how to modify habits successfully (I like the book The Power of Habit), cutting through the misinformation surrounding what constitutes healthy eating habits and how to lose weight, and often just education about how to cook food cheaply and in a way that doesn't seem intimidating to people who are pressed for time and resort to fast food out of convenience. When people know the concrete steps one must take to achieve something, they become that much more willing to believe they can do it.
• jahewson 10y ago
  I think as a society it is pretty clear that we do not know the secret to not being obese. I can't count how many times a day I am bombarded with messages telling me to eat junk food, that it's fine, it's fun. People do not live in a vacuum and can't be judged too harshly for choosing the options that society has worked very hard to place in front of them and promote. It's simple psychology that when faced with sizes such as small, medium, large, giant, extra giant, then people stop choosing small. Should we accept personal blame for our innate cognitive biases? No, of course not. What we should do as a society is stop manipulating people into making choices which ultimately harm them.
  • angry-hacker 10y ago
    The secret is eat less calories than you burn. What are you talking about?
    • jahewson 10y ago
      And yet knowing that doesn't solve obesity at a societal level. How do you actually get enough people to do that? We have no idea.
      • quotemstr 10y ago
        Maybe we don't know exactly the right way to get lots of people to eat less, but it's certainly not making everything ultra-delicious with tons of sugar and running continuous advertisements to children for these new ultra-delicious foods.
        • prostoalex 10y ago
          Just a few comments above you people strongly advocate consuming fewer calories to lose weight, and, as we all know, sugar is less calorie-dense than protein or fat. </sarcasm>
    • tchock23 10y ago
      As the article notes, eating less than you burn is effective for a while until the body works to get back up to a previous set point to maintain homeostasis. An excellent book on this topic is The Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung
• xg15 10y ago
  How about the point where you don't build a multi-billion dollar industry based on undermining exactly that kind of agency and body responsibility?
• civilian 10y ago
  If we're on the hook for paying for their health coverage, then being authoritarian about what people can consume starts to make a lot of sense.
  • mmanfrin 10y ago
    s/their/our
• shakil 10y ago
  I guess we have learnt enough to know you cannot blame people for their sexuality, or their inability to come out of poverty without external help, etc. But see a fat person and its open season to make all kinds of value judgements without knowing the root cause of their obesity. Partly its because there's this huge "health" industry that encourages the blame game by pushing out messages like if you were to just try a little harder, you would be lean and fit too. But thats just BS, people should educate themselves and try to understand the near impossibility of losing weight and keeping it off on a long term sustained basis.
• smogcutter 10y ago
  Either tremendous numbers of people simultaneously and coincidentally find themselves sapped of will and personal responsibility... or there's something systemic at work. So the question isn't what happened to personal responsibility. It's why exercising that responsibility is apparently so much more difficult than in the past. Address that, and you'll find the "agency" problem largely solves itself.
• unclenoriega 10y ago
  I would argue that banding together as a society to stop a marketing industry whose goal it is (in many cases) to scientifically undermine our agency is exactly people taking responsibility for their own bodies and lives. Is that not the effect of "asking the government to step in and help us?"