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I feel like this is treating obesity as a scientific problem, and not a mental one. It's absolutely, one hundred percent the latter. Losing weight is easy. E

I feel like this is treating obesity as a scientific problem, and not a mental one. It's absolutely, one hundred percent the latter. Losing weight is easy. Eat less calories than you burn. If you don't know what that is, assume 1500ish. I know this, but still have had huge phases of gaining and losing weight in my life. And it was never because I'm so dumb as not to know why or how to fix it, but because fatty foods become some type of 'good part' in an otherwise uneventful day. Or because you're so exhausted fast food is all that's for dinner. We've got to figure out how to fix the mental parts. With the rise of social media and the recently published 'loneliness epidemic', I suspect this will get worse before it gets better.

switch007 4y ago
100% agree with this. I just got out a bad relationship and I’ve gained 7kg. You need to be in a really good place mentally to make all the good decisions and fight all the advertising.
crooked-v 4y ago
The funny thing is, I've always had an easier time keeping a steady weight in the parts of my life when I relied on fast food or chain restaurants because I could reliably count calories. It's when I cook at home that I have a hard-to-impossible time trying to keep track.
eternityforest 4y ago
Many foods are designed to make you want to keep eating them. If you have cookies in the house you will probably eat them, or at least I will, if you have something healthy that takes effort to make you'll probably eat a serving and move on. Too many calories might be bad no matter what the source is, but some foods seem to make people want to eat more of them than others... and some foods have negative effects even aside from weight. They seem pretty sure even lots of stuff that's totally natural isn't that healthy... The thing that I would really like to understand is why social media and internet addiction doesn't make us eat less. I would expect the American diet to be a lot healthier now that phones exist, because we all look at screens all day, you would think we would just eat exactly enough to not be hungry, and maybe a little more as a social thing, and otherwise maybe even forget to eat half the time, like people do when engrossed in a book or a project? Why can't tech fill our pointless dopamine seeking needs just as well as eating crap? Shouldn't intermittent fasting be kind of automatic now? Perhaps one might expect us to even have healthy meals more just to show off on Instagram. Instead we scroll while we eat, and we even doordash now, from what I hear. It almost seems like the scrolling makes it worse!
modo_mario 4y ago
I feel like it's mostly people trying to do calories in calories out that experience these swinging weight issues throughout life. There's not much lifestyle change involved in eating less for a while. It's approaching it from a single angle based on which it succeeds or fails and whilst that seems more complicated at face value having to count calories and resist urges seems like so much more mental effort? If one doesn't do a minimum of anything vaguely resembling strength training or other exercise surely ones resting metabolic rate is low making it so one has to eat even less to stop gaining fat which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks... If one doesn't eat somewhat decent food as a default and just looks at calories whilst ingesting shit surely one ends up with deficiencies and consequential urges notably when cutting back on food in general which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks...

switch007 4y ago

100% agree with this. I just got out a bad relationship and I’ve gained 7kg. You need to be in a really good place mentally to make all the good decisions and fight all the advertising.

crooked-v 4y ago

The funny thing is, I've always had an easier time keeping a steady weight in the parts of my life when I relied on fast food or chain restaurants because I could reliably count calories. It's when I cook at home that I have a hard-to-impossible time trying to keep track.

eternityforest 4y ago

Many foods are designed to make you want to keep eating them. If you have cookies in the house you will probably eat them, or at least I will, if you have something healthy that takes effort to make you'll probably eat a serving and move on. Too many calories might be bad no matter what the source is, but some foods seem to make people want to eat more of them than others... and some foods have negative effects even aside from weight. They seem pretty sure even lots of stuff that's totally natural isn't that healthy... The thing that I would really like to understand is why social media and internet addiction doesn't make us eat less. I would expect the American diet to be a lot healthier now that phones exist, because we all look at screens all day, you would think we would just eat exactly enough to not be hungry, and maybe a little more as a social thing, and otherwise maybe even forget to eat half the time, like people do when engrossed in a book or a project? Why can't tech fill our pointless dopamine seeking needs just as well as eating crap? Shouldn't intermittent fasting be kind of automatic now? Perhaps one might expect us to even have healthy meals more just to show off on Instagram. Instead we scroll while we eat, and we even doordash now, from what I hear. It almost seems like the scrolling makes it worse!

modo_mario 4y ago

I feel like it's mostly people trying to do calories in calories out that experience these swinging weight issues throughout life. There's not much lifestyle change involved in eating less for a while. It's approaching it from a single angle based on which it succeeds or fails and whilst that seems more complicated at face value having to count calories and resist urges seems like so much more mental effort? If one doesn't do a minimum of anything vaguely resembling strength training or other exercise surely ones resting metabolic rate is low making it so one has to eat even less to stop gaining fat which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks... If one doesn't eat somewhat decent food as a default and just looks at calories whilst ingesting shit surely one ends up with deficiencies and consequential urges notably when cutting back on food in general which makes it more difficult and if everything hinges on it that sucks...