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> You could argue that overweight folks are also paying disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less. Overweight people

> You could argue that overweight folks are also paying disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less. Overweight people pay their tax in a significant decrease in their quality of life. Eating unhealthy is way way cheaper. I can confirm both after 170lbs of weight loss. My food budget quadrupled. Rice, pasta, and white bread are cheap. Meat and veggies, not so much.

clort 5y ago
It sounds good but I find this framing uncomfortable because tax is not a penalty. Overweight people pay a penalty in a significant decrease in their quality of life, yes. That is not a tax though - tax is a contribution to society, and a decrease in one persons quality of life is not a contribution.
- kcplate 5y ago
  I was using it metaphorically. And for what it’s worth…some of us do consider tax a “penalty”
erhk 5y ago
Carbohydrates are not inherently unhealthy.
- camhart 5y ago
  I'd add to this that loosing weight simply requires a calorie deficit. There is no requirement that you must eat large portions of meat to loose weight. With that being said, eating low carb may be an easier way for some. Don't want to discount that.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    While this is mostly true…there are other factors at play that can make this deficit difficult. I went for 2 months without losing a pound despite a net -1000kcal between diet, exercise, and my “probable” BMR. My suspicion is that my BMR dropped when my body realized it was basically in a famine state and decided to conserve every calorie it could any way it could.
    - fredophile 5y ago
      That's almost certainly not what happened. While your body will get more efficient in starvation conditions it takes time and doesn't start instantly. There are certain biases that people have with weight loss and eating that are very common and result in less results than you expect. There's a good chance your "probable" bmr was overestimating calorie burn. If you were basing calories burned in exercise from what a machine at the gym was telling you, it almost certainly overstated the calorie burn. Unless you meticulously weighed everything you put in your mouth you probably ate more calories than you think you did. Even if you did measure everything carefully and accurately, there's some degree of error in the nutrition data on packaging. The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. Even fairly extreme fluid fluctuations wouldn't cover that weight loss unless you started dehydrated and fairly overweight.
      - goostavos 5y ago
        You're getting downvoted because, I assume, you didn't include the possibility of magic as a an explanation in your analysis. Rookie mistake in these threads. While it may superficially seem like yours was the best explanation for lack of weight loss -- that OP made a simple error and over-estimated his caloric deficit (and further didn't adjust the deficit when receiving data to the contrary)-- what you need to account for are the "other factors" which currently exceeds our understanding of biology and physics. Using these 'other factors' it's possible to do everything right, and still not lose weight (through no fault of your own).
        tsimionescu 5y ago
        There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. It's not at all improbable that BMR can be affected significantly by dieting in some individuals, a priori. It could also be affected by other lifestyle changes that happened together with the dieting, such as medication.
  - nazgul17 5y ago
    My understanding is that that is an old way of thinking that sounds good but doesn't work. You need to put in the right type of calories: high GI foods will make it harder for you to lose weight by stimulating insulin production which in turns stimulates your cells to sequester all the sugar in your blood and turn it into fat (and you get lethargic and hungry as a bonus). You also need to exercise as your diet continues: your body will slowly burn muscle mass if your intake decreases for long enough, and with less muscle you burn less and eventually hit a wall. Exercise replenishes that muscle mass (assuming you eat enough protein). It's complicated. I'm not a medical doctor, the above is just my understanding, so take it with a grain of salt.
- kcplate 5y ago
  They are when you are a type 2 diabetic and your body cannot handle them properly.
- cko 5y ago
  But they're inherently cheap! And more addictive, apparently, based on how my friends crave them all the time.
jollybean 5y ago
The 'ill or obese' analogy isn't very good because it doesn't capture the contagious effects, which is the artifact of COVID that makes it different than other health and safety issues. We don't stop people from going to the theatre because they have diabetes or cancer. COVID is a highly contagious disease, that's what makes it a community problem, not an individual problem. It's a more akin to having proper winter tires while driving: while it's mostly an issue of personal safety, there are other cars on the road who will mostly likely end up in an accident with you, and so there's an externalization there. Now imagine if you got someone in an accident because you didn't have winter tires, and they also had some material degree of getting someone in an accident (i.e. if there is an R0 > 1, they will likely also crash with someone). Then the whole highways is jammed up, and everyone is affected. It's the contagion that makes it a problem.

clort 5y ago

It sounds good but I find this framing uncomfortable because tax is not a penalty. Overweight people pay a penalty in a significant decrease in their quality of life, yes. That is not a tax though - tax is a contribution to society, and a decrease in one persons quality of life is not a contribution.

kcplate 5y ago
I was using it metaphorically. And for what it’s worth…some of us do consider tax a “penalty”

erhk 5y ago

Carbohydrates are not inherently unhealthy.

camhart 5y ago
I'd add to this that loosing weight simply requires a calorie deficit. There is no requirement that you must eat large portions of meat to loose weight. With that being said, eating low carb may be an easier way for some. Don't want to discount that.
- kcplate 5y ago
  While this is mostly true…there are other factors at play that can make this deficit difficult. I went for 2 months without losing a pound despite a net -1000kcal between diet, exercise, and my “probable” BMR. My suspicion is that my BMR dropped when my body realized it was basically in a famine state and decided to conserve every calorie it could any way it could.
  - fredophile 5y ago
    That's almost certainly not what happened. While your body will get more efficient in starvation conditions it takes time and doesn't start instantly. There are certain biases that people have with weight loss and eating that are very common and result in less results than you expect. There's a good chance your "probable" bmr was overestimating calorie burn. If you were basing calories burned in exercise from what a machine at the gym was telling you, it almost certainly overstated the calorie burn. Unless you meticulously weighed everything you put in your mouth you probably ate more calories than you think you did. Even if you did measure everything carefully and accurately, there's some degree of error in the nutrition data on packaging. The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. Even fairly extreme fluid fluctuations wouldn't cover that weight loss unless you started dehydrated and fairly overweight.
    - goostavos 5y ago
      You're getting downvoted because, I assume, you didn't include the possibility of magic as a an explanation in your analysis. Rookie mistake in these threads. While it may superficially seem like yours was the best explanation for lack of weight loss -- that OP made a simple error and over-estimated his caloric deficit (and further didn't adjust the deficit when receiving data to the contrary)-- what you need to account for are the "other factors" which currently exceeds our understanding of biology and physics. Using these 'other factors' it's possible to do everything right, and still not lose weight (through no fault of your own).
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. It's not at all improbable that BMR can be affected significantly by dieting in some individuals, a priori. It could also be affected by other lifestyle changes that happened together with the dieting, such as medication.
- nazgul17 5y ago
  My understanding is that that is an old way of thinking that sounds good but doesn't work. You need to put in the right type of calories: high GI foods will make it harder for you to lose weight by stimulating insulin production which in turns stimulates your cells to sequester all the sugar in your blood and turn it into fat (and you get lethargic and hungry as a bonus). You also need to exercise as your diet continues: your body will slowly burn muscle mass if your intake decreases for long enough, and with less muscle you burn less and eventually hit a wall. Exercise replenishes that muscle mass (assuming you eat enough protein). It's complicated. I'm not a medical doctor, the above is just my understanding, so take it with a grain of salt.
kcplate 5y ago
They are when you are a type 2 diabetic and your body cannot handle them properly.
cko 5y ago
But they're inherently cheap! And more addictive, apparently, based on how my friends crave them all the time.

jollybean 5y ago

The 'ill or obese' analogy isn't very good because it doesn't capture the contagious effects, which is the artifact of COVID that makes it different than other health and safety issues. We don't stop people from going to the theatre because they have diabetes or cancer. COVID is a highly contagious disease, that's what makes it a community problem, not an individual problem. It's a more akin to having proper winter tires while driving: while it's mostly an issue of personal safety, there are other cars on the road who will mostly likely end up in an accident with you, and so there's an externalization there. Now imagine if you got someone in an accident because you didn't have winter tires, and they also had some material degree of getting someone in an accident (i.e. if there is an R0 > 1, they will likely also crash with someone). Then the whole highways is jammed up, and everyone is affected. It's the contagion that makes it a problem.