environmental causes of obesity?
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DCRunningDiva
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 Posted: 10/22/04 - 09:34 Post subject:
| elkid wrote: | | When I was big, my problem was self control, too. Portions in the US are ridiculously large compared to other nations (big surprise there - everything here has to be bigger! better! faster!) and the simple notion of "eat what you need to fuel, burn off the rest" is pretty much lost on Americans. I, too, always knew how to lose weight. I just never really wanted to. I haven't "dieted" since I graduated college; I've been fortunate. Despite all the pounds and sizes I've lost in the last 2 1/2 years, I've still been able to eat whatever I want because of my high activity level. I just found over time that my stomach tolerance became less, so I can't eat cheese fries, mozzarella sticks, and Chinese food as often as I once could without getting ill. |
I grew up in Kentucky so you can imagine what my diet used to be. Fried foods, McDonalds, butter, butter, butter. It has taken me a long time to get over that. I would say, though, that in the past 8 years I can hardly ever have those kind of foods because I feel sick for the rest of the day.
I agree with you on the size portions. My husband is from Japan and the size portions there are MUCH smaller than in the U.S. Have you ever noticed that when you go to a Japanese restaurant you feel like you aren't getting a lot of food? Even in the U.S. Japanese restaurants serve you more food then they do in Japan (from what I hear...I've never been to Japan). I don't know who started this "super sizing" but it is "super killing" a lot of people. Remember (some of you that are old enough to remember) when McDonald's largest hamburger was what we now call the hamburger in the kid's meal? It's sad.
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elkid
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 09:40 Post subject:
| DCRunningDiva wrote: | | Have you ever noticed that when you go to a Japanese restaurant you feel like you aren't getting a lot of food? |
Just last night even! We went for my birthday. We ordered double dinner meat, so we got 12 oz of filet mignon v. 6. Just enough to get us full after a little rice, noodles, and veggies.
Of course washed down with a few Sapporos. 
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cherylpf
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 09:53 Post subject:
I heard an interesting phrase yesterday: "America is overfed and undernourished" which kind of lends to my point that despite how much we are eating, we aren't eating the right things either.
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robp
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 09:53 Post subject:
| DCRunningDiva wrote: | I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT believe obesity is a "lack of education" problem. I watched "The Big Loser" the other night and I believe one of the people on there made a very good statement...he said something like "Fat people know exactly how to lose weight." I am no exception. Almost every single time I get in a discussion with a skinny person about me losing weight I can tell them just about everything they want to know about how to lose weight.
So, what is the problem? I think people have a huge lack of self control. I believe we use food in wrong ways. We use food for celebration (here little boy, you have done a good job...here is a piece of candy), We use food for entertainment (Let's do lunch), etc. Our lives revolve around food. People with little to no self control find living like that very difficult and will overeat. Some people will get to the point where they overeat so much they become more and more hungry, they loose more self control, and then become obese. This, I believe, is why we can have lots of skinny girls in their 20's who become obese in their 30's (not to mention child birth).
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You hit the nail squarely on the head Diva.
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RexRacer
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:02 Post subject:
Diva and Rob,
Yes and no.
Diva I put up this link earlier in the thread and you may have missed it since you didn't read the whole thing
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17EATING.html?pagewanted=1&oref=login
Main thesis explores the notion that we (the US) are both the most diet-anxious/diet-conscious and most-overweight people in the world.
I think that one of the downsides of our modern American experience is that being a melting pot we don't have strong cultural connections to habits of eating that the French, Italians, or Japanese do.
When you add Elkid's observation that bigger is always better, you can see that we are suffering from abundance in large part. And I think that's still part of how we're wired as animals. We gorge because we can, because were encouraged to, and also because alot of the stuff that's popular, advertisment saturated (when's the last time you saw a carrot commercial?) and often cheap and easy to buy or prepare, just isn't that healthy.
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genie
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:17 Post subject:
| phillycat wrote: |
GEEK!
signed - dorky analyst geek  |
I'm so geeky I actually thought about this all the way to school last night as a potential project and brought it up in class since my teacher is also a big geek and loves this kinda stuff. 
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cherylpf
crazy cat lady
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:17 Post subject:
| DCRunningDiva wrote: |
I grew up in Kentucky so you can imagine what my diet used to be. Fried foods, McDonalds, butter, butter, butter. It has taken me a long time to get over that. |
With all due respect, I grew up in Kentucky and very rarely ate fried or fast foods until college.
I also think its a lot bigger than self-control. I think food is being produced, marketed and distributed to make the big bucks for these companies at the expense of our health in this country. I noticed when I was in Europe this summer the lack of even FAT people there, much less obese. But too, I think I lost 6 lbs on my 9 day trip. We walked everywhere. Walked to the train station, walked from the train to where we were going. Walked back to here. Walked there. And that is how people live there, its easier than having a car. So obviously calories are burned. But speaking strictly from a nutritional standpoint, as a result of being 'limited' by walking, there aren't drive thru fast food places, and you have to make an effort to walk to McDonalds (walking past a lot of much better food for the same price I might add). Food isn't as readily accessable there. You think twice about getting a super-sized shake to go with your whatever when you don't have a cup holder and you have to carry it all. Here there are vending machines and drive thrus we can get our food without even exerting the energy to stand up out of our cars. Obesity is hard too, because unlike problems like smoking or alcoholism, we still need nutrition. You can't cut it out completely.
Rex's NYT point is interesting too. Makes me think of being on a diet: all you can think about is the food you aren't eating. And I really like the line "We are suffering from abundance". How true.
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phillycat
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:20 Post subject:
| cherylpf wrote: | | I heard an interesting phrase yesterday: "America is overfed and undernourished" which kind of lends to my point that despite how much we are eating, we aren't eating the right things either. |
 sooooo true!
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genie
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:28 Post subject:
| cherylpf wrote: |
With all due respect, I grew up in Kentucky and very rarely ate fried or fast foods until college.
I also think its a lot bigger than self-control. I think food is being produced, marketed and distributed to make the big bucks for these companies at the expense of our health in this country. I noticed when I was in Europe this summer the lack of even FAT people there, much less obese. But too, I think I lost 6 lbs on my 9 day trip. We walked everywhere. Walked to the train station, walked from the train to where we were going. Walked back to here. Walked there. And that is how people live there, its easier than having a car. So obviously calories are burned. But speaking strictly from a nutritional standpoint, as a result of being 'limited' by walking, there aren't drive thru fast food places, and you have to make an effort to walk to McDonalds (walking past a lot of much better food for the same price I might add). Food isn't as readily accessable there. You think twice about getting a super-sized shake to go with your whatever when you don't have a cup holder and you have to carry it all. Here there are vending machines and drive thrus we can get our food without even exerting the energy to stand up out of our cars. Obesity is hard too, because unlike problems like smoking or alcoholism, we still need nutrition. You can't cut it out completely.
Rex's NYT point is interesting too. Makes me think of being on a diet: all you can think about is the food you aren't eating. And I really like the line "We are suffering from abundance". How true. |
I noticed similar things when I was in Ireland last fall. I did lose weight on my trip (part of course being that they don't EAT over there, whereas we get a sandwich and beer for lunch, they get a beer and a beer  ) but we did the same thing, walked everywhere, because we didn't need to drive. I totally agree with the convenience, in our "hurry up dammit" society, of drive thrus, etc. I am guilty of that many times on my way to school because it's so much faster to not have to get out of the car than it is to go somewhere even like Subway or Wawa and get a healthy sandwich or some soup or something. I think this is why the malls all have built in food courts too, although there are real restaurants in most of them here.
Rex is definitely right about the suffering from abundance, but I'm not totally buying the restaurant portions are too big excuse. That, I feel is a self control issue. Take half of it home and get lunch the next day, two meals for the price of one. Who says you have to eat that whole big huge bowl of pasta just because it's sitting there. Anyone who's ever followed a structured weight loss program like WW knows that is always listed among the strategies for being able to eat out and still lose weight.
But, as Diva states, it's difficult to make the transition between knowing what to do to be healthy and doing it. There's often a lot of emotional stuff that goes along with overeating, and that has to be addressed before people are willing to value themselves enough to treat their bodies well. Once you start doing that, it's a little easier, and like elkid said, your vody gets adjusted to not eating crap and lets you know in no uncertain terms that it doesn't want crap when you do eat it. When I was bigger, it was due to a misprescribed medication, but of course, anytime someone sees an overeweight person, they automatically assume you're just a glutton. I found that to be most distressing, since that wasn't my issue. I can only imagine how hard it is for those for whom self control is a real problem. 
So again, what's the answer(s)?
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elkid
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:52 Post subject:
| genie wrote: | | So again, what's the answer(s)? |
Eat to fuel, burn off the rest. Consume more than you need, you get fat.
Seems pretty simple to me.
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robp
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 10:55 Post subject:
| elkid wrote: |
Eat to fuel, burn off the rest. Consume more than you need, you get fat.
Seems pretty simple to me. |
In a nutshell... as long as you don't eat too many of the nuts.
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RexRacer
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 13:28 Post subject:
| robp wrote: |
In a nutshell... as long as you don't eat too many of the nuts. |
The shells, however, are packed with fiber!
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robp
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Posted: 10/22/04 - 13:30 Post subject:
| RexRacer wrote: |
The shells, however, are packed with fiber! |
The shells, however, taste like crap! Well.. what I expect crap might taste like if I knew.... never mind. They don't taste good.
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DCRunningDiva
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Posted: 10/23/04 - 09:09 Post subject:
| RexRacer wrote: | | We gorge because we can, because were encouraged to, and also because alot of the stuff that's popular, advertisment saturated (when's the last time you saw a carrot commercial?) and often cheap and easy to buy or prepare, just isn't that healthy. |
I haven't seen a carrott commercial but I did see an apple commercial and to be honest it was so disgusting (hearing people "slurp" on their apples) that it almost made me not want to buy apples again...and I like apples!
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genie
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Posted: 10/23/04 - 12:59 Post subject:
| elkid wrote: |
Eat to fuel, burn off the rest. Consume more than you need, you get fat.
Seems pretty simple to me. |
Unless you take into account the emotional drives that influence many people's eating habits. To some who just don't know how to eat healthy, it is easy to apply this philosophy and say: "eat less, more veggies and less cheesesteaks and get off the couch three times a week" and that might be all they need. For others, and this comes from working with people with eating disorders, it isn't as simple as just saying "drop the donut and get your ass out the door and run." It just isn't, and that's where I think there are huge gaps that need to be addressed. And where people underestimate the power of emotional motivation.
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