It's Gotten Harder to Lose Weight- And Not for the Reasons You Think
Last edited Thu Oct 1, 2015, 03:22 PM - Edit history (1)
The Washington Post today called out the "it's all about diet and exercise so it's your own fault" fat-shamers with the evidence of a new study indicating what a lot of us have known for a long time.“Weight management is actually much more complex than just ‘energy in’ versus ‘energy out,’” Kuk said in the statement. “That’s similar to saying your investment account balance is simply your deposits subtracting your withdrawals and not accounting for all the other things that affect your balance like stock market fluctuations, bank fees or currency exchange rates.”
The study notes that among the many factors that appear to correlate with higher obesity levels in the adult population, the changing composition of foods themselves-- pesticides, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and other ingredients, play a role. So do the the containers foods are packaged in, stored in, and eaten from. So do non-food factors like prescription medications.
So does an area we're increasingly aware of, the human microbiome, an individual characteristic as unique as a fingerprint, and one we have no clear understanding of as yet, and certainly no quick and easy monetize-able recipes for changing or controlling.
Short version: The ways we, as a whole culture, have changed our economy, our environment, foodshed, health system, etc., are making us fatter. Blaming individuals for not being able to "control" their diet and exercise sufficiently is increasingly futile and counter-productive.
The solution to the obesity epidemic lies as much in changing our economy and our culture as in promoting changes in individual behavior.
analytically,
Bright
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sorry, but you don’t get off that easily. Obesity IS about personal responsibility. Obesity is caused by mental and physical laziness. Mental laziness being the primary contributor. You need to read labels, eat more real food (not processed), avoid high fructose corn sugar, avoid sitting for hours on end (get up and move around once per hour). I could go on with a very long list of simple, manageable things that each of us can do to stay fit. I am so sick of hearing this “learned helplessness”. The more we are around obesity, the more acceptable it becomes. The simple fact is that you don’t see this level of obesity anywhere else in the world. Yes cultural/economic/policy changes are needed, but there is a tremendous amount that individuals can do to care for themselves. Thank you for reading my rant 
weight issues struggle with. Two years ago due to a profoundly traumatic event I had to force myself to eat and lost 60 lbs in just months. That is the first time in my life where extreme stress eliminated my appetite. I swore up and down, I would never gain weight back but I did when life took a very very bad turn; I didn't think things could get worse but they did. Instead of not eating I was hit with the sugar cravings I have battled with all my life, the cravings were utterly beyond control and the weight came back on.
People who don't have issues with food just cannot understand people like us, just like people who drink moderately can't understand alcoholics.
Anyway I just wanted to say I hear you and am wishing you all the best. 
you can comment on and really rant about how people are choosing bad health and obesity? 
I am appalled we come from the same area.
shoves bad food and bad habits at us at every turn, just for its own profit. It encourages everyone to eat 6 times a day (keeps your metabolism high!), to eat on the run; keeps crummy food low-priced (McDonald's) and good food high-priced (veg, fruit); extols a work culture of sitting 60 hrs a week; pays little attention to structural fixes that encourage exercise (sidewalks, local parks, bike paths, inexpensive gyms).
Why aren't healthier habits of all kinds encouraged by the culture? Because this culture is not a real culture -- it's a commercial venture in which any cultural habits of years past (eat only 3 meals a day of real food, desserts are for Sunday dinner) are wiped out if they interfere with profitmaking. The whipsawing effect of jerking people from one pole to another (from "you have to be skinny!" to "Have this KFC and a Blizzard shake too!"
not only sells junk food, but also diet schemes, pills, exercise videos. The sellers win either way. The French, for example, have had a real culture that vilifies snacking and eating on the run, plus they walk a lot more, so they've avoided obesity up until now; a slow rise in weight is coinciding with the introduction of fast food outlets and the breakdown of the old ways.
Add in the huge rise in the number of kids who won't eat anything but chicken nuggets and French fries or other industrial food. I now know adults whose taste buds and food habits are so degraded that they still eat like toddlers (pizza, candy, chicken nuggets, etc). I'm 64 and that's new in my experience: adults in my childhood and early adulthood did not eat like that. This means that a whole generation has been turned away from what we would all call normal food, all so that industrial food producers can make tons of money.
You cannot expect the majority of the members of a 'culture' to ignore what its culture tells it to do. Every anthropologist and social worker knows this. The idea that we will all individually decide to dump a large part of our 'culture' is just a way to make it the fault of each individual, which allows the sellers to go their merry way.
They are real. There are millions of people, mostly women, with undiagnosed and/or undertreated hypothyroidism issues. The most common form is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune diseases run in families.
It really messes with your mind when my mother spent years screeching at me, "You don't eat enough to keep a bird alive!" and trying to make me eat foods I just can't stand or am allergic to, when I was young and small, and then dropping hints at me later when I was a grown up about losing weight.
And then there's always some physics major who thinks human digestive chemistry is like a simple in and out physics equation. It's not.
This is why the media sucks. They post stories about hypotheses being fact before they even get debated and studied.
by saying shit like "it's only a theory." 
Sensationalism masking as science reporting.
Cher
of members who just love to work out... This is becoming a huge trend!
https://twitter.com/laceup88/status/582367395840282624
Mr. Universe I am not, but they have useful advice.
On top of cutting sweets and carbs, and eating more fruits and vegetables, I found personally that I wasn't getting enough protein.
Bodybuilders will do bulking and cutting cycles. When they bulk, they deliberately eat more than they burn, with a protein-heavy diet, and pound the hell out of the weights at the gym, to induce their bodies to build muscle. Of course, some of those extra calories get stored as fat, so after bulking for a while, they go into a cut cycle, where they go on an old fashioned calorie-restriction diet, exercise, but not as hard, maybe switching to more cardio, and burn off the extra fat. But even on the cut cycles, the rule is to eat lots of protein. Too little protein, and the muscle bulk you've worked hard to build is lost.
It does help when some of the pounds I've put on are in the form of muscle. 
I will also say that if you really want to lose weight, exercise is absolutely necessary. Yes, it's technically possible to lose weight sitting on your couch, and taking in fewer calories than you burn, even if the calories you take in are in the form of Twinkies. Practically, if you try that, you'll drive yourself crazy, and you'll fall off the wagon.
Eat right, cut the carbs, eat more veggies, and get a proper balance of the macros - carbs (you have to have some, just not too much), fat (same as with carbs) and protein (I had to adjust to eat more protein). Make sure you're restricting your calories, so track everything you eat, count your calories, and watch your portion sizes - it's easy to eat double what you think you're eating if you're not measuring and keeping track.
And hit the gym! Or do something that involves pushing your body hard and sweating. If you're not sweating, you're not doing it right. Cardio is good. Running, biking, even walking is very efficient at burning calories. Hitting the weights is also good, though it doesn't really burn much in calories, but it builds up your muscles, which over time increases your metabolism. But exercise also gives you a psychological boost that among other things, helps you stay on the diet wagon. Gotta love that dopamine & endorphin high.
I hardly recognized them when we met up months later.
They'd lost so much weight—and have kept it up for years.
I realize this doesn't back up the post, but I just wanted to share.
Response to TygrBright (Original post)
