Unless her plans “focus on the causes of childhood obeity” by addressing their genetic makeup, then I’m not too hopeful that this is going to do any good. Also from Jezebel, an oldie but goodie:

http://jezebel.com/5356697/fat-vs-fiction

Next, I hope that Michelle Obama can address the epidemic of height issues with children in America - we’re getting taller and it’s bad for our health! There’s no reason this should continue - won’t someone think of the children?

Srsly, before anyone starts trying to “fix” obesity in this country, we need to get to a point where science agrees WHY people are/aren’t obese. We don’t have scientific consensus on that point alone, conventional “wisdom” aside.

One thing that I’m surprised isn’t being looked at more is how our use of steroids and hormones in our industrial food supply might lead to obesity.

I think shakesville got it best:

“Anti-obesity” will remain functionally indistinguishable from “anti-obese person.”

How about an “anti high-fructose corn syrup” campaign? How about an “anti feeding families shitty food is cheaper than feeding families healthy food” campaign? How about an “anti farm subsidies” campaign?

Oh. Right. Because that might hurt the feelings of corporations. Better that we spare the delicate fee-fees of corporations and make life even harder for fat kids.

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/02/brace-yourselves-fatsronauts.html

There are way too many factors that go into whether or not someone is “obese” fro something like this to be truly successful, but it does feel like a big step in the right direction.

My own battles with weight appear to be caused by too much wine & beer (Dr.‘s, what do they know?). So even though I try to eat right, spend as much time outdoors or at the gym, I still have work to do.

It is difficult to even get good information as to what kinds of food are healthy and low-cal, I keep trying to live by the eaters manifesto by Micheal Pollan, “eat food, mostly plants and not too much of it”, the problem is almost everything has some additive that probably isn’t good.  Plus, in my case I can’t give up Pepsi and Mtn Dew, but once I use up my stock pile of Throwback Pepsi I am going to try to give up soft drinks.

Okay, that’s great, Essie.  But we’re talking up rising incidences.  I’m interested in the evidence that the genes for obesity are rising, because that would be fascinating information.  And you’re right, should that evidence be produced, that should shape the discussion.

But by how much? What is there about a platform centered around better nutrition, more exercise, and better food labeling do you object to?  If obesity is purely genetics—-and rising rates are due to the gene being more prolific, not due to changes in diet and exercise—-wouldn’t it still be important to get people moving and eating better?  Do you believe that diet and exercise have an impact on someone’s overall health, even if you deny it has an impact on weight?

We’ve had this discussion on here before, so hey, refer back to that, but Americans also need to stop being LAZY, yes, LAZY about their food.  There is no way, unless one adopts a raw food diet, to eat healthy without cooking - and that takes at least some time, and planning.

To be clear, I think that fat activists are right about how fat people shouldn’t face discrimination from the health care system or employers.  I’m just concerned that claims that diet and exercise have no influence on weight are a) not scientifically accurate and b) are shading into claims that diet and exercise have no influence on health.  I do think it’s true diets don’t work.  Which is one reason it’s good to aim public policy at children, because we know that once you’re overweight, it’s really hard not to be.  And the main reason is that the only option offered in our culture is dieting, which is bad for you and doesn’t work anyway.

Also, we know that exercise and diet habits laid down in childhood are hard to shake.  Which is no big deal, if your idea of what to eat and with your body center around exercise and eating right.  But people who eat a lot of junk food have a serious hill to climb training their tongue to want healthier foods.  And that’s true, regardless of how skinny they are—-a lot of skinny people eat like shit.  They would also be tremendously helped by this program.

Ok, Essie, but people don’t have “You will get fat.” genes. They have “You will get fat if you’re exposed to too much corn or soy or something else we don’t understand yet.” genes. Genetics is important, but so is the western diet, and theoretically we can fix that.

Phylosopher, that’s unfair. The entire American food system is geared toward making people fat. And being “not lazy” about food is a privilege. You have to have access to supermarkets, time to cook, a real kitchen, energy after your workday . . . When every boxed and processed food is filled with HFCS, soy, corn, salt, and that’s all that’s available to a lot of lower class Americans, they’re not just being lazy about food.

Everyone already hates me on this topic, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway:

Yes, we do have a problem as a country.  Our food is filled with preservatives, hormones and HFCS.  We’re getting second and third generations of people who have no idea how to cook because their parents didn’t know how, so they eat nothing but processed food.  Physical activity is being removed from our lives bit by bit—even something as simple as opening a door has been automated.  In the meantime, we’re working longer hours, which leaves even less personal time away from our desks.  Stress levels are very high.  Sleep disorders are common.  Type II diabetes used to be a disease of older adults—now it’s common among children.

Can we at least stop pretending that these things—which, yes, can lead to obesity—are not a problem and everything is perfectly fine?  I understand the fear that any attempt to improve these things will just lead to more fat-bashing, but we really do have a problem and the problem is not going to magically go away if we pretend it’s only fat-bashing so we don’t have to think about things like schools eliminating recess so they have more time to teach kids how to take standardized tests.

I think that Michelle Obama’s ideas are good.  The only thing I object to is the framing of it as an anti-obesity campaign rather than a pro-health campaign, and how she was talking about her daughters getting fat and then she was spurred to change their diet.  Some kids get chubby before they shoot up in height around puberty.  Some kids (like me) shoot up in height first and stay very thin until puberty catches up regardless of diet.  Young girls are very susceptible to eating disorders and focusing on weight is a very bad idea in my opinion.  Now as an adult, I eat much healthier than I ever did as a kid, exercise regularly and guess what?  I’m 5 lbs lower than the fattest I’ve ever been, and I’m no where close to as thin as I was in my teen years drinking sodas and eating candy every day.  I see nothing wrong with doing everything we can to make eating healthy and exercise easier and more convenient for everyone but framing it as primarily a way to reduce obesity rather than improve health OUTCOMES is problematic for me.

I wonder if the obsession with youth sports isn’t part of the problem, young kids who might be learning to appreciate excercise are getting yelled at by hyper-competetive youth coaches, and pretty much learning to hate excercise.  Unless you are one of the few who is a good athlete it seems like kids are taken out of sports earlier and earlier.

Plus, hyper-parenting where you are a bad parent if you don’t drive your kid everywhere, pretty much teaches kids to hate and fear walking; not too mention most cities are not set up to be friendly or safe for pedestrians and the suburbs are even worse, most kids don’t leave their protective coccoon of mom or dads SUV until they are eighteen when their parents kick them out. 

Michelle Obama did not pick an easy one

I see nothing wrong with doing everything we can to make eating healthy and exercise easier and more convenient for everyone but framing it as primarily a way to reduce obesity rather than improve health OUTCOMES is problematic for me.

Unfortunately, given the way Americans think, if it’s framed as health outcomes, nothing will get done.  We just love to kick problems down the road, so most people think, “Sure, I have a family history of Type II diabetes, but I feel fine now, so I’ll just ignore it until I start having problems.”  Of course, by the time they start having problems, it’s blown up into a huge health problem that takes a ton of intervention and medical care to resolve, if it can be resolved at all.  I think that’s the basis for at least some of the hysteria from various medical authorities—they’ve figured out that if you don’t tell people that they have a problem they need to deal with RIGHT NOW, people won’t do anything until it’s too late.  So RIGHT NOW gets moved earlier and earlier to try and get people to wake up.

As a society, we suck at preventative medicine and public health.  Hell, we suck at thinking ahead further than next week.  Our economy is in shambles because CEOs can’t be bothered to look past the next quarter’s earnings.  It’s a pervasive problem running through our entire society that also applies to our health.

One thing that I’m surprised isn’t being looked at more is how our use of steroids and hormones in our industrial food supply might lead to obesity.

Oh they do.  I remember one study that tried to link child obesity and earlier menarche among girls with bovine growth hormone. 

These arguments do tend to fall apart however when you start looking at trends outside of the US as most countries are much stricter about what they actually allow in their food yet are still facing increasing obesity rates.  As in the rBGH (or rBST if you prefer) example, the European Union and Canada both banned it’s use, yet Canadian children and teens are now facing an obesity rate similar to American children.

I agree with shake’s point on this: why the need to put these goals under the banner of anti-fat? If we end up with healthier school lunches and more active kids and better food labeling and information for consumers, but kids are still fat, does that mean the program is a failure?

I think the campaign would be more successful if it was presented as a campaign FOR healthier kids in general rather than AGAINST fat (or fat kids). It would:
(A) just be more welcoming and positive (think of the kids who won’t lose weight even when they eat better and exercise - if weight is the metric of success, they will be failures even if they all of a sudden can run farther and lift more),
(B) not perpetuate, even if it doesn’t intend to, the idea that thin=healthy or health is visible, which leads us into a whole thing about body image issues and beauty standards and disabilities, etc., and
(C) probably get you thinner kids anyway because they’re eating better and moving more, but they’ll be thinner kids who have healthy attitudes about food and their bodies and aren’t just obsessed with the scale.

I agree with Mnemosyne’s post: We should be working to improve all the things mentioned, but to try and improve them only because they make people fat is the wrong approach. Even thin people suffer from bad nutrition and stress and a lack of exercise, and framing it all as an anti-obesity plan misses that. If the goal is to fight obesity, we could just make everyone anorexic and move along. The goal, though, is (or should be) HEALTHY LIVING, so why not just say THAT rather than talk about how fat people are?

What is there about a platform centered around better nutrition, more exercise, and better food labeling do you object to?

Because it’s insulting, condescending, engenders stereotypes about fat and/or poor people? Because it presupposes that fat people are stupid and need education? Because it wastes political resources that should be spent elsewhere? Both/and.

Some worthwhile reading:

http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/if-only-poor-people-understood-nutrition

You seem to be of the opinion that, hey, this may be rooted in stereotypes and body-shaming, but Michelle’s HEART is in a good place, so everyone should lay off her. Personally, I disagree.

In Essie’s defense, while our genes might not be changing, the concept of epigenetics tells us that the expression of our genes might be, and that’s not something that you can undo in your lifetime.  For example, some researchers point at the fact that the last “thin” generation, or however you want to define it, ate like shit.  The 1950s saw the introduction of the classic “meat and potatoes” meal, TV dinners, jello molds, and the growth of the modern supermarket.  It wasn’t some idyllic time of healthy, home-cooked, weight-conscious eating.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the next generation that we saw the rise in obesity rates.  A lot of scientists think that this is a result of genetic imprinting, which means that all the healthy behaviors in the world aren’t going to make us thin all of a sudden.

None of which is to say that we shouldn’t be focusing on developing healthy habits and, more importantly, making healthy habits accessible.  Frankly, though, I think it would be much more helpful to focus on lowering cholesterol and blood pressure than on lowering weight, since the first two have direct associations with health, while the last is most closely associated with stigma.

Also:

Wouldn’t it still be important to get people moving and eating better?  Do you believe that diet and exercise have an impact on someone’s overall health, even if you deny it has an impact on weight?

This isn’t being framed as a “movement is awesome, let’s all be HEALTHY!” campaign. It’s being framed as an anti-obesity campaign. It’s being framed in terms of Obama’s own daughters being “too fat”. (Which reinforces the idea that “female body” = “public property”.)

Even if it WAS a pro-exercise campaign, though, I oppose anything that’s rooted in the belief that ‘Mericans are just so damned *stupid* that thy don’t know to exercise. I would LOVE to, say, bike to the grocery store, but where are the bike lanes and sidewalks?

Oh, we don’t have political capital for that, so lets just scream DEATHFATS and call it a day for the first lady.

*Sigh*

The goal, though, is (or should be) HEALTHY LIVING, so why not just say THAT rather than talk about how fat people are?

Because it’s not just about healthy living.  If I may paraphrase our president, we’re not going to solve the structural problems with our food supply and our urban planning just because I eat a low-calorie lunch and take a walk after work.  It’s got to be something collective, because all individual action does is convince people that it’s a personal issue, not a societal one.

Everyone already hates me on this topic, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway:

Yes, we do have a problem as a country.  Our food is filled with preservatives, hormones and HFCS.  We’re getting second and third generations of people who have no idea how to cook because their parents didn’t know how, so they eat nothing but processed food.  Physical activity is being removed from our lives bit by bit—even something as simple as opening a door has been automated.  In the meantime, we’re working longer hours, which leaves even less personal time away from our desks.  Stress levels are very high.  Sleep disorders are common.  Type II diabetes used to be a disease of older adults—now it’s common among children.

I don’t think anyone here, on any side of the issue, would disagree with what you’ve said. I think the past disagreements were over the fact that you are one of the vanishingly small number of people for whom diets work on a long term basis, and your advice to people is usually to do what you did, even though countless studies show permanently losing weight that way is less likely than winning the lottery. The reasons you cited above are part of what makes it impossible to lose, or keep weight off (especially, I think, the amount of time we’re tied to a desk vs. how little personal time we’re allowed), but there’s also plenty of research showing that, even under perfect conditions, a lot of people will never be able to lose weight.

The goal, though, is (or should be) HEALTHY LIVING, so why not just say THAT rather than talk about how fat people are?

Because it’s not just about healthy living. If I may paraphrase our president, we’re not going to solve the structural problems with our food supply and our urban planning just because I eat a low-calorie lunch and take a walk after work.  It’s got to be something collective, because all individual action does is convince people that it’s a personal issue, not a societal one.

Aren’t you both agreeing with each other, though?

Antiope is saying, I think, that framing this as anti-obesity instead of pro-health is stupid for X, Y, Z reasons.

Mnemosyne is saying, I think, that framing this as anti-obesity instead of anti-institutionalized unhealthiness is stupid for A, B, C reasons.

And I am saying that Michelle Obama is playing in body-shaming AND institutionalized unhealthiness for a cheap, throw-away political gimmick to make herself look proactive, and science be damned.

I don’t see a conflict between these three views, from my corner of the internets.

“I agree with shake’s point on this: why the need to put these goals under the banner of anti-fat? If we end up with healthier school lunches and more active kids and better food labeling and information for consumers, but kids are still fat, does that mean the program is a failure?”

Yes.  And I wish I was kidding when I said that.  It is immensely tempting to literally tear one’s hair out after study after study shows a negligible drop in weight after, say, years of completely retooling a middle school’s way of dealing with non-academics to be more health-conscious when compared to schools that have done nothing and then declares all of those measures completely worthless.  Because, you know, the kids are still totaling up as Fatty McFattersons.  How they look, how they feel, impact on pre-existing conditions, impact on their outside-of-school lives, etc. are all apparently completely worthless compared to that goddamned chart.

<blcokquote>Phylosopher, that’s unfair. The entire American food system is geared toward making people fat. And being “not lazy” about food is a privilege. You have to have access to supermarkets, time to cook, a real kitchen, energy after your workday . . . When every boxed and processed food is filled with HFCS, soy, corn, salt, and that’s all that’s available to a lot of lower class Americans, they’re not just being lazy about food.
Comment #10: Av0gadro on 02/09 at 11:18 AM </blockquote>

And as long as we think that boxed stuff is food, we will continue to have food related health issues.  One can’t have that convenience without the additives at a reasonable price.  We need to be innovative and willing to give up some “chersihed” but less noble American ideals. 

1) the short order kitchen catering to individual tastes mentality - this begins in childhood (parents who think their kid will starve so bring along the processed crap the kid likes) and the individual servings packs. 

1b) the kids can’t be hungry instant gratification mantra - those cheerios brought along for the toddler soon becomes the snack chips and fast food purchases of the child and teen.  At some point, the kid needs to learn to WAIT for dinner.

2) the eww factor which is encouraged by (1) above (see bottled versus water fountains)

3) Food as entertainment - which with (1) above leads to the homecook (yeah, most often mom) thinking she needs to cook 7 differnet meals a week. 

4) (3) above which leads to thinking that in order to cook we need a shitload of pots, pans, spices and ingredients in our Mexican/Italian/Chinese/ Cali-Tex/ Swedish/ Moroccan kitchen.
Which makes cooking EXPENSIVE.

5) (2) above which also leads to not utilizing the whole animal - prime chefs know that cooking with “lesser cuts” save money, but most of us are unwilling to debone a chicken, find out what to do with pork neck, etc.

We’ve skated far too long on the idea that food and cooking is like laundry or lawn mowing - mechanization cannot substitute for human labor; it cannot be outsources inexpensively, but like exercise, hygiene, elimination and death, we have todo it ourselves and we therefore have to make it a priority in our choices.

The research I’ve seen indicates that very few consumers actually use the labels.

Maybe that’s because they’re unnecessarily complex. Who knows the difference between “fructose” and “sucrose”? Who has the time or expertise to break down all the nutrient categories that appear on the Nutrition Facts panel?

(Attention Pandagonians: Those were rhetorical questions. I’m sure many of you can, in fact, do so, but humor me.)

What would help is a simple “yes-no-maybe” approach to the nutritional value of individual products, perhaps along the lines of the “traffic light” system being experimented with in the UK. But that’ll never happen, because we don’t want Big Gummint putting their hands on our beloved potato chips blah blah blah.

One thing the Obama administration could do is take nutritional policy away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As it now stands, USDA has two entirely contradictory mandates: to improve the population’s nutritional practices, and to help farmers move their commodities. It’s contradictory when those commodities are made into unhealthy products, like cheese and corn syrup. Nutrition policy should rest with Health and Human Services or some other agency that isn’t beholden to Big Agriculture.

@ hypatia - do you have a link to that documentation?  is it just obesity that is similar, or are we also talking the early onset puberty?

The 1950s saw the introduction of the classic “meat and potatoes” meal, TV dinners, jello molds, and the growth of the modern supermarket.  It wasn’t some idyllic time of healthy, home-cooked, weight-conscious eating.  Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the next generation that we saw the rise in obesity rates.  A lot of scientists think that this is a result of genetic imprinting, which means that all the healthy behaviors in the world aren’t going to make us thin all of a sudden….

Comment #18: NicoleGW on 02/09 at 11:37 AM

Whoa there Nicole - that’s extremely misleading.  While TV dinners appeared in the stores, mass adoption was a long way behind. (Often it was a once-in-a while treat, not a way of life)  And the ‘burbs hadn’t yet spread so far that truck farms, local dairy home delivery and the visit of “the eggman” were prevented frm being actualities even for this large city raised kid-me!.  Not to mention that many a SAHM and there were more of them, still cooked actual food.  ANd those TV dinners had much smaller portions than today, and a willingness to economize by parents who had been through the Depression - hence my mother’s lifelong habit of “sharing” a can of soda.  When was the last time you saw someone do that with other than a four year old?

Essie, I agree with some of what you’re saying (fro example, I do think this should be phrased as a pro-health program) but when you say that this is condescending to people who are overweight you’re shifting the issue. This is a program directed at children in school (and I assume starting at a young age) not at adults. Do you think children have an innate understanding of nutrition and exercise? Of course, they should be taught about food and types of exercise in school.

In terms of causes, one of the issues is work and where we live: most people now have more sedentary jobs (there are a lot less farmers and factory workers); the move to the suburbs really went into overdrive after WW II (with the GI bill and the building of planned suburbs built specifically for cars).

Amanda also notes that dieting doesn’t work. That’s a bit too absolute, but it is definitely known that yo-yo dieting is quite bad for you.

No one here has addressed that the definition of “obese” is so low that if you aren’t thin you’re fat. 4 years ago I was wearing a size 8 and 10 pounds away from obese. I’m now well into obese and a size 12. It’s not that there’s an epidemic of OMG THE FATZ! as that most people are not thin enough to be a runway model (which I am defining, from experience, as a size 4 or below).

1) @18…Epigenomics is a very new field, and it involves some limited acceptance of Lamarkian concepts.  The concept here is *limited* and there is a lot going on here, especially in the sense that many of its measurable effects have a great deal to do with environment and population.  That being said, I have very strong doubts that anything to do with epigenetics have more to do with the scenario decribed in comment 18 than many other conceivable widespread stressors.  This sort of effect is extremely subtle and affects things on the *edge* of possibility and not within the wideban. 

2)  I take one look at Mrs Obama’s family and sympathize.  People like us aren’t really allowed be anything but athletic, and so we kinda have to be serious about controlling weight and choosing what kind of bulk we get.  For Obama’s daughters, they probably do have to be worried about being fat for health and comfort reasons.

3)  While I am sympathetic to fat shaming concerns (I certainly got my cautionary tale about that sort of thing from one of the Great Brain stories), people aren’t really meant to be fat.  There is certainly the bulk of middle age and the naturally chunky, but do you know what?  When health official are talking about a fat epidemic, they really aren’t talking about such people.  They are usually talking about people with life-shortening (and quality of life diminishing) levels of fat.  They are usually well beyond any superficial concerns about fat discrimination, and focusing on protecting those folks is misguided when the bulk of the fat-shaming revolves about sumptuary body-shaping and other class concerns.  I think we should be quite cautious in general about the issues arounding weight, because like or not, the people I think of when I think of “fat” people have a serious health issue that needs to be treated and that their issues should have some personal abstraction away from the political aspects of their condition.  Sloppy slingings about “fat shaming” (which is quite similar to the carelessness of much anti-tobacco rhetoric, tolerant/anti) is only going to feed into the class warfare that body shape is inherently about and won’t actually help people most victimized by anti-fatty bullshit.

This isn’t being framed as a “movement is awesome, let’s all be HEALTHY!” campaign. It’s being framed as an anti-obesity campaign. It’s being framed in terms of Obama’s own daughters being “too fat”. (Which reinforces the idea that “female body” = “public property”.)

Even if it WAS a pro-exercise campaign, though, I oppose anything that’s rooted in the belief that ‘Mericans are just so damned *stupid* that thy don’t know to exercise. I would LOVE to, say, bike to the grocery store, but where are the bike lanes and sidewalks?

Oh, we don’t have political capital for that, so lets just scream DEATHFATS and call it a day for the first lady.

*Sigh*
Comment #19: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 11:40 AM

Leave it to you to turn EVERYTHING into and attack on fat people - and oooohhh poor Essie victim.  can we please for once, have a discussion about food and nutrition and yes obesity and th eproblems it causes - without your victimhood?

WHile beign thin may not necessarily equate with helathy, being obese certainly does cause diabetes, heart diseases, cancers (new link between sweets and pancreatic).

Do you have a frickin’ clue what’s in those school lunches?  It’s what MY processor (small local abbattoir) uses as dog food! 
http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2010/01/would_you_like_ammonia-laced_p.php (first link I grabbed there are others - lots)

In case you hadn’t heard, one needs to FOCUS an issue.  Not to mention, put the word “health” in there and the kneejerk reTHUGlicans would be on the attack.  Just focusing on eating less is going to make some change - that gets people to start valuing the bites they take more because those bites are limited.

After reading post #31, I’m left to wonder if eating healthy causes dyslexia, or just the self-righteous scolding.

You’d have to be 210 pounds as a 5’9 person to be obese.

You’re overweight at 170.

That’s a FORTY POUND SPREAD. So no, it’s not that “if you’re not thin, you’re obese”.

And yes, obesity causes health problems as surely as smoking causes cancer. Some of these denials remind me of the old “smoker’s rights” arguments.

No one here has addressed that the definition of “obese” is so low that if you aren’t thin you’re fat. 4 years ago I was wearing a size 8 and 10 pounds away from obese. I’m now well into obese and a size 12. It’s not that there’s an epidemic of OMG THE FATZ! as that most people are not thin enough to be a runway model (which I am defining, from experience, as a size 4 or below).
Comment #29: Ashley on 02/09 at 12:49 PM

A bit disingenuous, I think.  Women’s dress sizes have been notoriously cahngeable due to marketing.  If you mean the BMI, that too can be misleading muscular healthy folk can register as fat.  But simply getting on the scale and comparing it to your own previous number once you reached a certain age isn’t fudgeable.  Noticing that one no longer fits into “the same size jeans” (or use a measuring tape) also isn’t fudgeable.  Neither is noticing that one is out of breath at the end of the block or the top of the stairs.  SOme simple common sense, please.

The main problem with delinking actual measurements of weights across population from health outcomes is that deprives of us the best way to measure how well we’re doing.  The health issues that stem from across-the-population* rising obesity rates reveal themselves after the rates already went up.  So depriving people of the one predictive measurement they have seems short-sighted.

*I’m making this clear, because invariably, people point to individual differences, such as being genetically predisposed to being stout or being an outlier who is both obese and has really good genetics that lead to lower blood pressure, to suggest that this conversation shouldn’t even happen.  No one denies that there are tremendous differences between individuals.  But as a public health initiative, rising rates of obesity predict rising rates of Type II diabetes and heart disease.

When the US government arbitrarily lowered the BMI ranges for overweight and obesity, overnight thousands of people, including the Yale Women’s rowing team found themselves suddenly obese. 

This just further underlines the arbitrariness of the lines for obesity, etc…

I agree, we would be better off framing this in terms of health, not “obesity.” Moving more and better nutrition are good things, we all agree.  But using terms like “fight against obesity” just adds to fat-shaming/hating rhetoric. 

And believe me, the sheer amount of shit I and other fat women have gotten while working out (isn’t what you want us to do, work out so we can adhere to your beauty standards?) or exercising in other ways, sort of gives lie to the concern trolling most fat-haters engage in. 

Also, keep your patronization away from my work outs.  The next person to call me a “good girl” for going to the gym eats their own teeth.

No one denies that there are tremendous differences between individuals.  But as a public health initiative, rising rates of obesity predict rising rates of Type II diabetes and heart disease.

Thank you.

My grandpa on my Dad’s side lived to be 96 years old and actually holds the record for longest life on EITHER side of my family. He also smoked three packs a day. That doesn’t mean smoking is harmless.

Oh fer…

Look, I’m not going to pretend that I’m thin, but someone needs to set fire to BMI once and for all. Muscle weighs more than fat. As someone who builds muscle lickety split but takes a fair bit longer to drop fat, I avoid scales like the plague, particularly while I’m trying to lose weight.

I did a Wii Fit/video workout regime for a long time. I had more energy, I was more focused, my clothes were fitting better, but the Wii insists on weighing you and “setting goals” and other such bullshit. So I litterally said “I want to lose one pound over 2 weeks” (about the easiest goal one could set for themselves. After two weeks, again, my clothes were looser, I was kicking all sorts of ass with my energy level, but I gained a pound instead of losing it, because I was building muscle. So then I had this damn video game belaboring how very sorry it felt for me and how I was a big fatty mcfat who needs to eat better.

And yes, obesity causes health problems as surely as smoking causes cancer.

Ben D, fact check?

http://jezebel.com/5356697/fat-vs-fiction
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/23210.php

According to the [second] study, obesity and extreme obesity cause about 112,000 deaths per year, but being overweight was found to prevent about 86,000 deaths annually. Based on those figures, the net U.S. death toll from excess weight is 26,000 per year. By contrast, researchers found that being underweight results in 34,000 deaths per year.

No MP, it’s being in a hurry because
a) the kids need a lunch (and while they will fix it themselves, I need to reach something for them and give a bit of direction

b) I need to look up the recipe for the pork stew I’m putting in the crockpot

c) I’m trying to get to the gym so that

d) my back spasm doesn’t recur from too much time at the computer - yep.  I need to heed my own advice and reprioritize - more cooking less computer. 

Bye all!

One pound is basically margin of error, Ponygirl. It could be any number of things—you could have had more water to drink that day.

Um, Essie, you didn’t disprove that being overweight causes health problems—only that being overweight causes health problems and so does anorexia. Well, big fucking surprise there.

“Maybe that’s because they’re unnecessarily complex.”

The RDAs are still pretty cut-and-dried; one does not need to be a scientician to be able to judge whether or not you really need to be getting 75% of your RDA of sodium from a single-serving pack of roasted nuts.  And most of the basic categories are covered in high school health classes.

Though I was always under the impression that the labels were there less over healthy-lifestyle judgments wrt food and more over safety judgments.  We don’t label things containing peanuts as containing peanuts because peanuts are good or bad for you, we do it so that people with peanut allergies can stay out of the ER.  We may not know what that chemical difference between fructose and sucrose shakes out as, but diabetics probably do.  I don’t give a shit about what number red dye was used in my licorice, but the parent of a child that turns into the Tasmanian Devil after eating Red#4 likely does. 

“As it now stands, USDA has two entirely contradictory mandates: to improve the population’s nutritional practices, and to help farmers move their commodities.”

Those aren’t even remotely close to inherently contradictory, though.  Broccoli doesn’t just fall out of the sky.  We do, in fact, farm fruit and vegetables.

Ben D: Did you not see what I wrote about my clothes? I was “thinner” than I had been. Appreciably so. People were commenting on it.

This isn’t about me not taking a piss before I was weighed. This is about muscle weighing more than fat.

I agree with shake’s point on this: why the need to put these goals under the banner of anti-fat? If we end up with healthier school lunches and more active kids and better food labeling and information for consumers, but kids are still fat, does that mean the program is a failure?

It’s not “anti-fat” so much as “reducing the rate of childhood obesity”.  It’s a distinction with difference—-no one is saying you’re a bad person if you’re fat. 

The question is, how do you measure success?  Since we know diet (diet, not dieting, a much different thing) and exercise are linked to weight, then kids who exercise more and eat better across the board will weigh less across the board.  And they’ll have less diabetes, etc.—-but 20, 30, 40 years from now.  Which can’t be measured in most studies, and certainly not in government programs.

This isn’t a small question.  You can implement programs, but unless you allow yourself to measure their effectiveness, you can’t see flaws.  Simply providing better food?  Well, if we can’t measure if that worked, how do we spot flaws like, “Kids just cross the street and eat at McDonald’s instead.” 

Permitting public health officials to acknowledge the link between rising rates of obesity and rising rates of diabetes and heart disease has allowed them to see flaws in the system they wouldn’t find if they were forbidden to measure specific, immediate outcomes.

No, Ben D., but I *DO* think I satisfactorily made the point that equating DEATHFATS = smoking = lung cancer is comparing apples and oranges.

Especially since DEATHFATS can be got as a side effect of diabetes. Your argument would make slightly more sense if smoking was a side effect to getting lung cancer…but it isn’t.

Because it’s insulting, condescending, engenders stereotypes about fat and/or poor people? Because it presupposes that fat people are stupid and need education? Because it wastes political resources that should be spent elsewhere?

I don’t really see how it’s condescending to say that because of lack of access to exercise and fresh, nutritious food, poor people have worse outcomes, and if we want to change that, we’ll change the circumstances.

Ben D: Did you not see what I wrote about my clothes? I was “thinner” than I had been. Appreciably so. People were commenting on it.

I lost fifteen pounds after college and I had the same weight fluctuations—you have a loss and then gain maybe 1-2 pounds then lose again even though you feel like you’re getting thinner the whole time. And in the long term, you do.

Muscle also burns more calories so if you’re building it that weight will drop off in fat in the long term.

It’s not “anti-fat” so much as “reducing the rate of childhood obesity”.  It’s a distinction with difference—-no one is saying you’re a bad person if you’re fat.

Um, no, it’s “anti-fat in children”. You said as much. So when this gets implemented and fat children REMAIN fat, well, it’s because they’re stupid. Or lazy. Or not trying hard enough. Or they have bad parents. Or they live in the wrong areas.

That’s the complete opposite of body acceptance. It’s the opposite of saying, “hey, you can be Healthy At Every Size”.

Since we know diet (diet, not dieting, a much different thing)

Calling it a “lifestyle change” STILL does not work:

http://kateharding.net/2007/04/12/diets-dont-work-but/

Um, no, being overweight is a risk factor for diabetes.

I don’t recall hearing about an epidemic of kids with a normal BMI and Type II diabetes. Doctors even call having a “beer belly” being “pre-diabetic”.

Maybe that’s because they’re unnecessarily complex. Who knows the difference between “fructose” and “sucrose”? Who has the time or expertise to break down all the nutrient categories that appear on the Nutrition Facts panel?

I think they’re not that complex, but sure.  Labels need to highlight the most crucial info: calories, fiber, fat by type, vitamins.

Very good. I’ll get myself down to a size eight and be considered morbidly obese by BMI standards. Sounds fantastic, and really great for my self-esteem. Go BMI!

I think we should cram as much processed sugar down our throats as possible, while avoiding any exercise under any circumstances, then drive around on little go-carts, merrily aware that any attempt to improve these outcomes is fat-shaming.

WTF? Dress size has nothing to do with BMI. Dress sizes change over the yeas and are even different between manufacturers. It’s the same with men’s waist sizes—they’re next to worthless as an indicator.

It’s height and weight, unless you’re a pro athlete and/or on anabolic steroids.

Ex. I have three pairs of khaki pants that fit exactly the same even though they’re three different sizes. Because they’re from different manufacturers, bought in different years.

When the US government arbitrarily lowered the BMI ranges for overweight and obesity, overnight thousands of people, including the Yale Women’s rowing team found themselves suddenly obese.

Exactly the sort of problem I’m pointing to.  Is BMI the best measure for individual health?  Obviously not?  Is rising obesity across populations linked to diabetes, heart disease, etc.?  Absolutely.  Most people who are considered obese in a population aren’t the Yale women’s rowing team.  We can’t really judge group trends by outliers when crafting public policy to address collective solutions.

My God, Ben, you’re so completely ignoring my point it makes me think you’re suffering from some sort of medical distraction. Maybe you should eat something.

I don’t really see how it’s condescending to say that because of lack of access to exercise and fresh, nutritious food, poor people have worse outcomes, and if we want to change that, we’ll change the circumstances.

It’s condescending because it presupposes that the fat people don’t know why they’re fat or how to fix it. You’ve already said as much that this program will not give parents more time to cook the “good” food you deem healthy, so what good is this “anti-fat in children” program going to do by teaching them that they just need to eat X, Y, Z things to be healthy?

It presupposes that poor people have the time and money to be thin, but that they just don’t know how. I don’t see Michelle Obama’s “make schools carry bottled water” plans fixing that stuff any time soon. I don’t see it even *acknowledging* that fat people are fat for any other reason than being uneducated.

Look at how many people on this thread are “helpfully” explaining how to lose weight. Why, my god! The overweight people on this thread <u>must never have heard these things before</u>.

For my next trick, I will now convert Jews to Jesus by telling them that I think Jesus was the Messiah. (Sorry, been reading Slactivist today.)

I think some people are confusing “ovweight” on the BMI with “obese”. Or at least I hope so, because if you’re 5’9 and 210 pounds or the equivalent and people comment on how think you are there’s something wrong with your scale.

Fuck you, Ben. That was completely uncalled-for.

Um, no, being overweight is a risk factor for diabetes.

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2006/12/obesity-paradox-2-how-can-it-be.html

The Seven Country Study, for example, which has followed 13,000 men over the last 40 years, has found that the risks of dying from cancer and infections decrease with increasing weight. In long-term prospective studies, complications (like retinopathy) and mortality rates from type 2 diabetes are three times lower among heavier people. And people are much more likely to survive a hospitalization if they’re “overweight” than if they’re thin.

Essie, no one is personally calling you anything, or calling anyone anything.  Okay, so the program is implemented and trends in weight stay the same.  You’re right!  It’s wrong to say, “Well, people are evil and lazy.”  No one is suggesting we do this.

What happens next is the program is examined for flaws.  Maybe some flaws break the way you want—-the kids were all exercising so much they became the Yale women’s rowing team.  Then the program and the measurements are altered to fit this new information.  Likelier is we find the program isn’t attacking the underlying reasons kids are eating crap and not exercising, and we need to find new ways to make that happen.

Unacceptable: just giving up and saying, fuck trying to improve the health of the nation.

We can do this!  Smoking was subject to the same kind of ongoing analysis.  A program is tried, measurements are taken (immediate ones, not down the road ones), and flaws are identified.  Next program addresses flaws.  Slowly but surely the smoking rate goes down, and so do rates of diseases linked with it.

Phylospher, I sew, thus i take my measurements rather exactly and regularly. As of this morning I am smaller in all areas but one than I was 2 years ago, and only .75” larger in one area (I’m 7 months postpartum, so the belly is still rather floppy). I’ve achieved the holy grail of weight loss and I’m still fat. All my habits are a bajillion times better than they were when I was a size 4, and I’m still fat. The BMI matters because that’s what they use to count the fat people. My BMI is ~32 (I don’t keep close tabs on my weight at all). I’m fitter and healthier than I’ve ever been, but I’m still “obese,” and still get harassed constantly to devote my life to losing weight. And 40 pounds is not that much; on my body it’s 2-3 dress sizes.

Also, you should note that there is a uniform 40 pound spread between “overweight” (on my body a size 8, waist measuring 28 inches) and obese (on my body a size 12-14, waist measurement of 33 inches) at every height. Look at the chart closely. One BMI=6-7 lbs, one inch=4 lbs. So, a 6’ person and a 5’ person have the identical spread between being declared overweight vs. obese.

I think some people are confusing “ovweight” on the BMI with “obese”. Or at least I hope so, because if you’re 5’9 and 210 pounds or the equivalent and people comment on how think you are there’s something wrong with your scale.

http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/

Ben, may I introduce you to the many faces of the BMI?

Broccoli doesn’t just fall out of the sky.  We do, in fact, farm fruit and vegetables.

Yes, but we don’t subsidize them, nor do we devote anything more than cursory attempts to get people to consume them.

The Agricultural Resource Service is an arm of the USDA that works to find new uses for agricultural commodities. For example, Pizza Hut’s godawful idea of stuffing cheese inside the rim of pizza crusts (are they still doing that?) was developed by ARS researchers.

From an economic standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Since the federal government (IOW, taxpayers) subsidizes both milk and the grain used to feed cows, it behooves them to encourage as much milk consumption as possible to cut down on the subsidy cost. But from a public-health standpoint, it just stinks.

How can you even address the problem when no one can even agree on an objective measruement?

BMi is “fat shaming”.

Pounds are “fat shaming”

Dress sizes are “fat shaming”.

So do we just get to invent our own definitions here for ourselves? Is that what this is all about? We each get to individually decide if we’re a health weight or not?

Unacceptable: just giving up and saying, fuck trying to improve the health of the nation.

But, Amanda, I’m not saying that. Really. It’s not binary to me: Either implement Michelle Obama’s program OR do nothing. I think there are a lot more options than that.

I’m very much FOR: healthy food in schools (funding! taxes!), healthy physical programs in schools where exercise and moving are fun, encouraged, and not shaming (dance! track! treadmills! bicycles!). I’m very much FOR better food programs for the poor, better nutrition labels (people don’t read them because they aren’t even enforced - you’re getting far more calories than you think you’re getting), and better urban planning for daily exercise.

What I’m AGAINST is Michelle Obama ignoring all that in order to capitalize on fat shaming so she can have her day in the limelight.

Now. You’ve interpreted her motives differently. And I can agree to politely disagree. But I cannot agree that her methods and plan will be anything BUT destructive and condescending. Does that mean I think we should do nothing? No! It’s not binary.

Look, I agree that the BMI when used to evaluate individuals is a flawed tool—-most are—-and needs to be used in conjunction with other tools.  Of course it’s not an absolute measure of health!  There are outliers whose metabolisms are really high and still have miserable cholesterol, the Yale women’s rowing team, etc.

But as a measure to record trends across populations, it’s useful.  Insisting that we don’t measure trends in weight because there’s prejudice against fat people will do more harm than good.

Yeah, BMI isn’t great.  I would ignore it completely, except, if you know you aren’t muscular, and it is going up, and you haven’t been adding muscle, well, that is a bad sign.

This whole “diets don’t work” thing.  The reason “diets don’t work” in the long term is that people usually revert to old eating habits after the diet is over and their goals are reached.  If you drop to 800-1200 calories per day, you will lose weight (note—I’m not recommending this for anyone who is very old, has health problems, or has difficulty with mobility.)  If after you lose the weight you want to keep it off, you need to figure out how many calories per day you can eat and not gain weight.  Then eat that many.  Then, if you need to, correct downward if you put on some weight.

These kind of micro-adjustments are the sort I notice slender people making.  I.e., an ex roommate who would eat 1/2 to 2/3 of what she ordered and take the rest home for leftovers.  Or a friend who, after we went to a huge lunch said “well, I’m not going to have to eat dinner tonight.”  Yes, some people have faster metabolisms, some have slower, but at the end of the day, it is thermodynamics.

Yes, Ben, it is wrong to note that some of the usual methods of measuring obesity do not correlate to health outcomes, because that could never lead to superior methods being developed.  It’s unpossible.

So do we just get to invent our own definitions here for ourselves? Is that what this is all about? We each get to individually decide if we’re a health weight or not?

Why, yes.

Health At Every Size.

http://kateharding.net/faq/
http://www.lindabacon.org/haes.html

I can’t tell you jack shit about your personal health by looking at you. Neither can you for me. Best think YOU can do is assume that I am an intelligent person who knows what the fuck my own body needs.

See also: abortion rights.

I will repeat the old phrase “You cannot hate people for their own good.”  If fat shaming and repeated (rather condescending) reminders to eat less food and get more exercise worked then everyone in the country would be walking around with a BMI of 18.5.  These things do not work, have not worked, and will not work in the future no matter who is promoting the idea. 

More reasonable, I think, to explore concepts like being healthy at every size.  We’d certainly see more success.  “Being healthy” is a worthy goal.  “Being skinny” (if you are not skinny by nature) is not.  The two concepts are not interchangeable.

Well, I haven’t heard anyone suggest an alternative, except subjective standards.

Amanda, most people out there are not going to make the distinction between an anti-obesity campaign being about healthy eating and exercise and an anti-obesity campaign meaning that all fat people are bad, lazy and mainline lard and sugar all day long while using a Lark instead of walking.

Most people are not you, me, or the many of the commenters here at Pandagon, who are much more aware than the majority of the US public, and so many of the comments here get it wrong and are assholes about it.  So what do you think the odds are of Joe the Plumber making a distinction that the aware, more analytical folks here can’t seem to make?  Somewhere between slim and none. 

Framing this as a Health campaign as opposed to an anti-obesity campaign would be far more effective, without throwing more fuel on the fire of the fat-hating douche-helmets who seem to think that every fat person out there doesn’t know they’re fat and hasn’t already tried every fucking diet to come down the pike to please, dear god, please just let me lose enough weight for people to leave me the fuck alone and be able to buy clothes in normal stores for normal prices. 

I kid you not when I tell you that I’ve had people tell me I shouldn’t eat fruit because it has too much sugar in it.  Fresh fruit.  Like you’re supposed to, right?  I’ve been scolded for drinking apple or orange juice.  Oh, and don’t get me started on how I shouldn’t lift such heavy weights, or I’ll get “big.”

Yeah, it’s ALL health.

How do you measure success, Essie?  I’m sure that public health officials are eager to find ways to measure success that don’t involve shaming.  They usually are.  That’s why the made AIDS testing anonymous.

Do I get to decide what level of cholesterol is healthy for me too? Or how much plaque in my arteries is a healthy amount? You’re bordering on magical thinking.

I agree, Geek, but the solution is not to run public health officials from using useful measurements to evaluate programs.  It’s to work on the public’s attitudes.

I will repeat the old phrase “You cannot hate people for their own good.”

Agreed, but unfortunately, non-shaming, non-hating approaches are being taken as hateful because people are understandably defensive about this.

Essie Elephant, at some point, isn’t this campaign you’re on a sort of derail that prevented a more interesting discussion?  I mean, ARE we having a discussion?  I read the post at shake’s sister which you linked to, and I’m reminded even more about why I don’t read there.  Those people piss me the fuck off, because they so often wind into narcissic weeners.  Oh yeah, there’s brave Ian, fat, diabetic with peripheral neuropathy out and about to run the marathon.  That’s great for Ian.  But do you know fucking what?  There’s also stories like the one Ding told over at Bitch Ph.D, about her mom’s choices, and there is my whole prone-to-diabetes family and their choices, and there is the whole bio background that still had a bunch of premed aspects.  I do operate with the teensiest knowledge of endocrinology and other topics that surround fat, diabetics, the works.  I’ve also paid attention to fat issues over the course of my life.  And do you know what?  Mrs. Obama is someone who is probably *very* much like me—bio/med background, comes form poor black country to the big city stock, is a big girl with big uncles and big brothers.  She also has every appearance of competence and empathy.  As such, there is every fucking chance that she, like me, is far more aware of fat-shaming than you give her credit for, and is also far more aware of how many people need and want help with this for serious health reason that are both complex and personal than you seem to be.  This…crusade, about one aspect of an interesting post, doesn’t resound to your credit.

The question is, how do you measure success?  Since we know diet (diet, not dieting, a much different thing) and exercise are linked to weight, then kids who exercise more and eat better across the board will weigh less across the board.  And they’ll have less diabetes, etc.—-but 20, 30, 40 years from now.  Which can’t be measured in most studies, and certainly not in government programs.

This isn’t a small question.  You can implement programs, but unless you allow yourself to measure their effectiveness, you can’t see flaws.  Simply providing better food?  Well, if we can’t measure if that worked, how do we spot flaws like, “Kids just cross the street and eat at McDonald’s instead.”

Permitting public health officials to acknowledge the link between rising rates of obesity and rising rates of diabetes and heart disease has allowed them to see flaws in the system they wouldn’t find if they were forbidden to measure specific, immediate outcomes.

But if you measure success by weight alone, you’re not getting a full picture of how effective the program really is.  You are ignoring the fact that it’s completely possible for people to turn their lifestyles around and still be fat.  You open the door for the program to be deemed a failure because the kids are still fat, even it is having a positive impact on health.  Sure, it’s important to measure if the kids are actually eating the healthier school lunches or finding a way to bring in some unhealthy contraband.  But for me, kids eating healthier food IS success.  Kids getting more activity IS success.  Maybe that will be reflected in weight, maybe not.  Maybe once they get fat it’s too late and the changes won’t be seen until the next generation anyway.  All I know is my experience which tells me my body simply will not lose weight without extreme starvation efforts. 

Focusing on obesity allows all sorts of people to fall through the cracks.
1.  The thin person who lives a crappy lifestyle but thinks they are just “lucky” that they don’t have to “worry” about what they eat.  My dad fits this description to a T.  He likes lots of red meat, potatoes, and junk food, but they proceeds to rag on my mother for being fat and acts superior.  This person is basically being passed through the system as “healthy” because they aren’t fat, even if they aren’t healthy at all.  If junk food is bad, it is bad for everyone, not just fat people.
2.  The fat person who can’t be thin no matter what they do and finally says “fuck it, if I’m going to be fat I may as well enjoy it,” giving up on a healthy lifestyle because no matter what they do they will always be seen as a symbol for an unhealthy lifestyle.  These people will never discover the true benefits of living healthy because the only benefit of being healthy is seen as weight loss and fuckability which they can’t seem to possess no matter what they do, so why bother? 
3.  Relatedly, the fat person who has turned their life around with a healthy lifestyle but is still shamed as being part of the “obesity crisis !!1” and a fatty mcfatt who should put down the donuts despite the fact that they never eat donuts.  Essentially the focus on weight tries to turn a #3 into a #2.

GeekGirlsRule,

Hah!  I lost a weightlifting partner for bench press in high school because she was afraid it would make her “big.”  She would still spot for me, which was sweet, because the proximity between the bar and the boobies would’ve made it a little awkward at that age to have a guy spot for me.

It really annoys me that a lot of women’s aerobic exercise tapes/programs/whatever have women lifting 5 pound weights where actual weightlifters, even juveniles just starting out, would be lifting at least 20.

This whole “diets don’t work” thing.  The reason “diets don’t work” in the long term is that people usually revert to old eating habits after the diet is over and their goals are reached.  If you drop to 800-1200 calories per day, you will lose weight

No. We assume people return to old eating habits BECAUSE the weight comes back, and who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? Conventional wisdom states that diets MUST work, so it they don’t, then you MUST have gone off your diet.

http://kateharding.net/2009/02/26/all-diets-work-the-same-poorly/

The study only followed people for two years, not five, but already saw weight regain in almost all participants. Nor were they surprised. The researchers said that they chose a two-year period because “weight loss typically is greatest 6 to 12 months after initiation of the diet, with steady regain of weight subsequently.”

About half the participants who completed the study ended up weighing more than baseline at the two-year mark.

Participants in every group were on average eating FEWER calories at the two-year mark, when they were regaining, than they were at the six-month mark, when they were still losing weight.

Seriously if this was like cholesterol levels there wouldn’t even be a debate. Because you can’t see cholesterol levels.

Amanda—the problem with the BMI is simple; the Ideal Weight isn’t.  At that point, the whole business is suspect.

Ben D.—you’re right, but not for the reasons you think.

Punditus, I’d be more sympathetic to arguments against the BMI if every person making that argument also didn’t believe that the ONLY good standards to measure a healthy weight are individually subjective ones. That just REEKS of bullshit and wish thinking.

Okay, that’s great, jezebel, but what other measurements do you use?  Scientists who do this for a living say that weight is a pretty damn good measure—-not perfect, but better than anything else we’ve got for measuring trends across populations.  I want solutions, not simply assuming the worst motives in public health officials.

How do you measure success, Essie?

You know, there are many ways to measure nutrition without the BMI.

Here’s a measure of success - raise the number of fresh fruit and vegetable servings that kids intake by providing free “fresh fruit and vegetable” coupons to anyone who wants to take them home from school. Why, we could have a whole government feeding program around that alone!

It’d help the economy by funnelling more people into supermarkets to pick up their fresh fruits and vegetables and - while they’re at it, picking up some other food as well, and maybe a quick rental from the Redbox on the corner. It’d help the farmers, by encouraging production. And, of course, it will cut back on DEATHFATS, which will cut back on health care spending, so the program will pay for itself! And you’d not only be educating kids about nutrition, <u>you’d be empowering them to use that education</u>.

And your measure of success? The increased turnover of fruits and vegetables and the decreased turnover of all the “bad” foods. Would that be “number-y” enough?

Maybe then we could segue into free condoms in health class…....

The ham in the picture is a bad choice amid the otherwise health foods.  Ham as shown likely to have too much salt and other preservatives. 
I’m also a big label reader, but much more so since my spouse’s heart attach.  Most people get more consistant about reading labels when they have a specific reason to do so.
Need to reduce sodium?  Make sure you check the labels for canned tomatoes (content varies drastically), whole grain breads, frozen vegetables (some have none, some are loaded).  Forget about any sort of processed meals.
Wheat glutten a problem?  You would be shocked what they put that in as an extra.

You’re right!  It’s wrong to say, “Well, people are evil and lazy.” No one is suggesting we do this.

Yes Amanda, you might think it is wrong. And you might not be suggesting we fat-shame.  But lots and lots of people do.  Lots and lots of people have fallen for the canard that fat=stupid, lazy and deserving of death.  Take a look at any number of articles on fatness on a mainsteam blog, say, and then take a look at the comments.  A high proportion will be all about hating on fat people for being lazy, stupid and entirely to blame for their own impending death.

Framing this as “anti-obesity” is feeding straight into this mainstream anti-fat people message, in much the same way as the “safe, legal and rare” slogan feeds straight into the anti-abortion message.  Dig a bit below the surface and you reveal a lot of nasty attitudes in a large section of society.

Why frame it as anti-obesity at all when it could easily and indeed should be framed a pro-health?

Or at least every person I’ve heard so far.

And I’ve been overweight before (15 pounds over, when I graduated college vs. being in the “normal” range in high school). I asked my doctor about BMI—he said it’s the best measurement we have and that it would probably be best to lost the weight. I think I’ll take his opinion over blog posts and anecdotes, just like I’ll take climate data from NASA over “hey, global warming doesn’t exist because it snowed today!”

Essie,

I started looking at the study, but couldn’t find any reference to (1) how many calories they were eating and (2) how they tracked it.  People tend to underreport calories.  And people in that study who continued going to group kept the weight off.  I find that very interesting.  If you look at the only studies that were done in a laboratory (they were done on pacifist volunteers in order to determine how to best help concentration camp victims gain weight) you see weight loss if you reduce calories.  Thermodynamics is pretty hard and fast.  Yes, there is some give in the system, but not much. 

Also, it isn’t necessarily their fault.  Not all calorie counts are that great.  For example, cooked vegetables have more calories than raw ones.  But the packages don’t say that.

Another problem with these “diets fail” studies is that most of them don’t have a comparison group of people who were in the same cohort of the people who dieted and did not diet.  How does their health look in comparison?

Oh, and if “increase in fruit and vegetable consumption” is THE measure of success, and not a side-effect, then the program won’t be immediately scrapped when/if America fails to suddenly lose weight right away.

Because the goal is <u>nutrition</u> not <u>removal of fat children from the populace</u>.

Also: eating fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the USofA? Patriotic!!

Most people are not you, me, or the many of the commenters here at Pandagon, who are much more aware than the majority of the US public, and so many of the comments here get it wrong and are assholes about it.

A lot of people are very sensitive about their weight and their diet and exercise plans. When you’re eating better, getting more exercise, and seeing results in the fit of your clothes and your energy level, and then someone makes sure to point out that you’re still FAT (whether they’re a doctor with a BMI wheel or just some anonymous douche making some crack about how no one would dare call a 200+ fatty “thin” in blog comments), it can be incredibly devastating to those plans.

This isn’t a rare thing. This happens to overweight/obese people all the time. We have to decouple this idea that you’re basic weight/height BMI score is a good measure of your health. We have to stop telling people “you need to lose weight” and start asking after the plans they have and supporting those plans or helping those plans be more effective. If it’s so important to have some number to make charts for the bureaucracy, use actual fat % on the body instead of just weighing someone and deciding that their body’s configuration is some arbitrarily-decided median to be measured against: that all people have the same bone density, cup size, muscle mass/density, and fat distribution is complete bullshit.

Essie, you haven’t given me an outcome measurement yet.  How do you find flaws in a system where you refuse to measure outcomes?

purple, that measures immediate issues, but doesn’t tell us much about long term pictures in the way weight does.  I do think like AIDS testing, weight should be kept secret.

Essie, the fact that you think anyone is acting genocidal towards fat kids tells me you’re not being clear here.  They want a reduction in obesity rates achieved by kids not weighing as much, not by removing kids!  Don’t be so paranoid.

Maybe then we could segue into free condoms in health class…....

Great idea!  Do you think it’s wrong to then measure to see if STD rates went down to see if the program worked?

People tend to underreport calories.

Um. So you think they mastered calorie reporting whilst losing weight and then stopped knowing how to report calories when they started gaining? Again, you’re starting with the supposition that they MUST have eaten more because weight gain can’t just happen to good people who are watching their calorie intake properly. That’s a “just world” issue. Do you not see that “they just didn’t know how many calories they were eating” smacks of condescention? I know you don’t mean it that way, but you’re assuming that since the study didn’t confirm your beliefs, then the people who participated must have written down the wrong data about what they were eating. That’s dangerous mentality.

http://kateharding.net/2008/01/01/if-your-pants-are-above-a-size-14-youd-better-hope-theyre-flame-retardant/

If you do not lose weight in any given week, then the starting point — and middle point and ending point — is that you must have fucked up, and we’re gonna figure out how! If you swear you didn’t “cheat,” didn’t make any “mistakes,” the presumption remains that there’s something you’re either just not thinking of, or deliberately lying about

Being accused of snarfing cough drops is obviously not quite like ending up on death row for a murder you didn’t commit. But what I’m thinking about here is the crazy-making aspect of being told again and again that you did what we say you did, even if you know damn well you didn’t. People can be badgered into confessing that they fucking killed people or molested children when they know they didn’t, just because interrogators will not let up on the “You’re guilty, and everyone knows it” theme. Is it any wonder fatties can easily be convinced we must have done something “wrong,” must have slipped up, cheated, forgotten something, not tried hard enough, when the whole freakin’ world is telling us that if we truly ate “right” and exercised, the fat would melt away? That’s a scientific FACT! You cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics! Liar, liar!

And, Ben D., if this were about cholesterol levels, the conversation would be over.  My cholesterol level?  It’s low.  I’m still fat.  Every time I go to my doctor she starts off with telling me all about how I’m going to die because I MUST have diabetes (or very soon will), high cholesterol and high blood pressure…  Then she checks my blood work. 

All my numbers are low normal.  All of them.  My good cholesterol is borderline too low.  The blood sugar’s gotten even better since my husband was diagnosed with diabetes and we cut all HFCS out of our diets and cut way down on carbs, but guess what?  I’M STILL FAT!!!!!! 

(This is me, being fat at you and doing the jiggly butt dance)

On the other hand, there’s a friend of mine who is incredibly thin.  He also has out of control diabetes and a cholesterol that I’m surprised hasn’t killed him yet.  He eats like shit, in spite of the diabetes, and doesn’t exercise at all.  He admitted to me that when he goes to the doctor, exercise never comes up for him, because he’s thin. 

We are not City of Heroes characters, with our stats floating in little bars over our heads.  You don’t know what my levels are by looking at me, you don’t know what that skinny guy down the way’s levels are, either.  You make assumptions as to how we should be treated by some pretty damn arbitrary criteria. 

So, here’s a plan.  Just treat everyone like human beings. 

That’s what Essie’s worried about.  Whether people like Amanda and many of the other commenters here can separate the words “anti-obesity campaign” from just “anti-obese,”  most people won’t.  And it will just add more fuel to the fat-hating fire.

And you might not be suggesting we fat-shame.  But lots and lots of people do.  Lots and lots of people have fallen for the canard that fat=stupid, lazy and deserving of death.

No disagreement.  We should work on them, instead of suggesting that public health initiatives that involve measuring weight as a legitimate, scientific predictor of general health outcomes be squelched.  I fail to believe that would actually stop fat shaming anyway.

Essie, the fact that you think anyone is acting genocidal towards fat kids tells me you’re not being clear here.  They want a reduction in obesity rates achieved by kids not weighing as much, not by removing kids!  Don’t be so paranoid.

Yeah, totally not what I said. I thought it was clear that when I said “removal of fat children” I meant removal of their fat, not “round ‘em up and shoot them”.

Then again, you get a lot of crazy commenters here like “cookie”, so I don’t blame you for thinking I meant it in the nutty insane sense, rather than the obvious “this is what we’ve been talking about all day” sense.

Essie,

I’m confused.  Looking at this table, for the two year mark, it looks like they all lost weight and kept it off (if not all of it off):

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/9/859/F4

Am I reading this wrong?  Do you consider it a failure?

BTW, I definitely agree that upping fresh fruit and vegetable consumption (and putting gov’t supports in place for it, perhaps instead of, ugh, corn) would be great.

Another aside—for those who are suggesting you either lower your cholesterol to improve your health through changing your diet or that you reduce salt—those are both big myths.  Unless you are talking about reducing a certain type of LDL (not total LDL) there isn’t even a correlation between lowering cholesterol through diet and having better heart disease affects.  There is also nothing wrong with salt.  It’s one of those bullshit memes that got started and needs to die.

We’ve skated far too long on the idea that food and cooking is like laundry or lawn mowing - mechanization cannot substitute for human labor; it cannot be outsources inexpensively, but like exercise, hygiene, elimination and death, we have todo it ourselves and we therefore have to make it a priority in our choices.
Comment #24: phylosopher on 02/09 at 12:36 PM

Well, if we had communal kitchens, where people shared cooking space, so we don’t all have to have the same stuff repeated in all our kitchens, and some of us agree to share or trade off cooking days, or trade dishwashing or shopping or prep work for food, then it wouldn’t be so repetitively labor-intensive.

But that would be communism.

And, Ben D., if this were about cholesterol levels, the conversation would be over.

The problem, from what I understand, is that we’re talking about children and not middle-aged adults.  Obesity in children is predictive of cholesterol problems they don’t have now, but many will down the road. Not all!  But we’re not prescribing for individuals, but looking at this from a public health perspective.

I think there’s a lot of confusion about the difference between individual care and public health initiatives.

Also, GeekGirlsRule said everything way better than I have, and I now have an internet crush on her. :D

Okay, alot of this is about terms and perspectives…

1)  Obesity is what it is.  A clinical term, and many people tend to use it when it’s medically significant.  That the term is also used as a euphanism for body image issues should be besides the point.  Projecting that Mrs. Obama is calling all Fatty Ms. McFats is just never going to be as useful as taking a public official at their word unless there is actually evidence that their word is bad.

2)  YES!  We all understand about the issues with BMI being an unreliable measure.  That having an extra 20, 30, 40 lbs of extra adipose tissue is not necessarily bad.  However, being fat is an excellent signal for many underlying issues—especially if you’re evaluating across a population.  The fact of the situation is—is that it’s gonna be alot like Global Warming.  1 degree of change may not seem like that much, but there are ramifications along the folded, marginal, edge.  5 degrees of change celsius would be fairly catastrophic even though it may not matter in any one town.  Dropping the weight of ONE pound across a population is far, far, far more about the worse off people losing lots of ill-health generating weight than it is about the average person losing a pound when they are 25lbs overweight.  That one pound will make a great deal of people happier, and we’ll spend MUCH less on preventable, but expensive diseases, and more on the genuine accidents of life.  There are genuine and humane up sides to the program Obama outlined (It will probably be fustrated, but we’ve always needed more serious attempts).  The war on fat shaming is fought on other battlefields.

Essie, yes, the idea is that kids weigh less, which is scientifically linked with long term improvements in health outcomes for groups over those groups of kids that don’t.  I’m not sure I understand the investment in keeping kids fat.

purpleshoes—you make a great point. If gym class is really supposed to be about improving health and not just teaching kids the basic rules of sports and then letting them run around on a field for an hour, then the tactics looks completely different. My biggest eye-opening experience was in 8th grade when, thanks to a substitute gym teacher who made running about being able to sustain a comfortable pace for a set amount of time (rather than trying to make X number of laps in Y number of seconds), I was able to actually do the mile run without walking at all. There weren’t really any good “metrics” to be had from this approach to take back to the bank, but it made a huge difference.

And, Ben D., if this were about cholesterol levels, the conversation would be over.  My cholesterol level?  It’s low.  I’m still fat.  Every time I go to my doctor she starts off with telling me all about how I’m going to die because I MUST have diabetes (or very soon will), high cholesterol and high blood pressure… Then she checks my blood work.

All my numbers are low normal.  All of them.  My good cholesterol is borderline too low.  The blood sugar’s gotten even better since my husband was diagnosed with diabetes and we cut all HFCS out of our diets and cut way down on carbs, but guess what?  I’M STILL FAT!!!!!!

Look, I don’t have an M.D. I just know when my doctor tells me to do something (like when he told me to lose +/- 15 pounds) it was probably a good idea to do it since he knows more about the body than I ever will. Just like I listen to climate scientists about Global Warming and biologists about evolution. They’re experts, I’m not.

Sure, there can be healthy fat people, I get it. There were also people like my grandpa who smoked their whole lives and had no repercussions from it and die at a peaceful ripe old age. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to quit smoking if you’re smoker.

Ismone, no, I don’t consider it failure, just an incomplete study.

Every current research I’ve read is that at the 5 year mark after the start of a diet/lifestyle change/what-have-you, the weight has come all the way back, if not more so.

Now, the usual rejoinder to that is “well, that’s because they quit their lifestyle change!!”

So THIS study looked at what they were *still* eating after 2 years and noted that, yeahno, the participants are *still* on their “lifestyle change” and yet they are *still* gaining weight.

Have they gained it all back yet? No. But here’s the thing - there’s still 3 years left before they’ve cleared the 5 year hurdle.

But I’m sure when they are back to pre-diet weight in 3 years, everyone will be happy to assume that they just got lazy.

purple, maybe.  I think it really depends on what gets you the success you’re looking for.  Public health is often about tinkering with systems.  I do think that shaming is generally not associated with success, but if someone sees that they’re reaching weight loss goals, that can often be inspiring.  *shrug*  Whatever works best.

Essie,

Not in any given week.  Sometimes calorie processing takes time.  Water retention is also a factor.  But we can’t get past thermodynamics.  There is simply no way to do so.  And yes, overall, they must have been making more mistakes over the course of the latter months than the earlier ones, or perhaps stopped moving around as much (maybe changed jobs, maybe got lethargic because our sneaky bodies do that when we stop eating as much).

Can there be give?  Can your metabolism change a little bit?  Yes.  But no one can put on weight unless he or she taking in more calories than he or she is expending.

And on “any given week” I’ve had the fun experience on both ends—when gaining and losing weight—that sometimes I’ll eat a whole ton one week, and then the next week, bam, 3-5 pounds on the scale.  Or vice versa—I’ll start a diet and exercise program, and perhaps because of some combination of gaining muscle/lag time, I don’t see *any* results until say, three weeks in.

Amanda, I was specifically addressing Ben D.‘s comment. 

But I’m curious as to why Purpleshoes’s thing about improving resting heart rates and fitness levels is a good enough outcome assessment for you?

I think that’s a FAR better indicator for health than weight. 

One thing no one’s addressed though, is that children need that baby fat for development.  Honestly, that’s something no one here has addressed, what’s going to be the outcome of parents foisting low fat everything on growing children and being paranoid about them being fat?  What developmental issues are we setting the next generation up for?

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that kids shouldn’t eat more veggies, less pre-processed crap and get outside more.  (What happened to parents throwing their children out of the house for the day on nice days?)  What Essie, at least, started out arguing against is the framing of this as “anti-obesity” as opposed to “pro-health.”  And I think purpleshoes did answer your outcomes assessment question, quite handily, actually.

Maybe I’m touchy about this, I had an aunt who was obese and denied her entire life anything was wrong with her—she ended up with type II diabetes at the age of 40, then a heart attack, was in a wheelchair at 55 and died at 60 from diabetes complications.

Oops, that “isn’t a good enough outcome assessment for you?”

Essie, yes, the idea is that kids weigh less, which is scientifically linked with long term improvements in health outcomes for groups over those groups of kids that don’t.  I’m not sure I understand the investment in keeping kids fat.

But this only works if you believe (as you do) that weight is a choice that can be influenced. See, when I say “weight is as much a factor of your genetics as height is”, I believe that. I’ve got buckets of research that backs me up. So I don’t believe you can “keep a kid fat” anymore than you can “keep a kid tall”. You believe that you can change a kid’s weight for the long-term, but you (I assume) don’t believe that height is a choice.

Now you’ve got your own research and conventional wisdom that weight CAN be meaningfully altered by X, Y, Z choices / factors / etc. And that’s an ongoing argument that I can’t win with you or anyone else.

What I CAN agree with you is fitness programs for kids. But don’t tie it to weight because (a) I think weight won’t change and (b) it won’t make the fitness program less worthwhile if the weight doesn’t change. Measure heart rate, or something else - you’re acting like weight is the only thing we can measure, and it’s <u>not</u>.

We should work on them, instead of suggesting that public health initiatives that involve measuring weight as a legitimate, scientific predictor of general health outcomes be squelched.

Geez, just about any measurement that was actually about health than weight would work, since that what I think we’re all agreed matters.  How about asking some scientists to go away and come up with an idea.  Since this is a public health initiative, that would seem to be a very good use of some of that initiative.

And note please that what is being measured is not simply “weight”, it’s BMI, which I think is clearly bogus.  See here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439 - for some examples why.

Once again, I fail to understand why this whole shebang has to be framed as “anti-obesity” when it could be just as easily framed as “pro-health”.  No one seems to want to answer that point, made by many people.

And hey if you want to take the risk, just like smokers take a risk, go ahead, but don’t expect people to tell children that it’s a GOOD risk any more than taking up a pack a day habit or doing cocaine is. And ditto for your doctor, part of his job is to tell you about bad risks you’re taking with your body.

Yes, but Ben D., I had a great grandmother who was 4’11” and weighed about 300 lbs most of her life, who lived into her 90s, not having any serious health issues until she was in her 80s.  So, does my gramma Mac trump your aunt?

Yes, but Ben D., I had a great grandmother who was 4’11” and weighed about 300 lbs most of her life, who lived into her 90s, not having any serious health issues until she was in her 80s.  So, does my gramma Mac trump your aunt?

Nope, because the data says the outcome of my aunt is more likely. Just like my grandpa who died in his 90s even though he smoked three packs of cigarettes. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me want to pick up a smoking habit.

But we can’t get past thermodynamics.

Only if you believe that bodies are controlled by a single, simple law. They aren’t. Believe me, if it was a matter of cutting out calories, most fat people would be thin by now. Bodies aren’t that simple.

Look, I don’t have an M.D.

Which is why you should have stopped posting and starting reading long before the “if your BMI is ‘obese’ and people tell you that you are thin, then your scale is wrong or they are lying to you” post.

I just know when my doctor tells me to do something

And doctors are NEVER wrong.

Pardon me, I have to go have a baby before I lose my fertility by turning 30.

I don’t think people are “lazy”—I think that it is difficult and requires a lot of vigilance to maintain weight loss.  Or to be “skinny” in the first place.  The slender people I know actually put a lot of work/not eating into maintaining their slenderness.

And I’d only see the value of the 5-year study if included people in the cohort would didn’t diet at all.  If they were healthier, I’d see the point.  But they might not be.

Oh, and I think lower rates of smoking are one of the big reasons there’s more obesity now. But lower rates of smoking very much a good thing—it is better to be an obese non-smoker than a skinny smoker.

(This is me, being fat at you and doing the jiggly butt dance)

I thought it was called the Truffle Shuffle? :p

Look, I don’t have an M.D. I just know when my doctor tells me to do something (like when he told me to lose +/- 15 pounds) it was probably a good idea to do it since he knows more about the body than I ever will. Just like I listen to climate scientists about Global Warming and biologists about evolution. They’re experts, I’m not.
Comment #113: Ben D.  on 02/09 at 02:08 PM

Wow, fifteen pounds you lost when you went to college and then lost it!  You are truly an expert in being fat and then losing weight. 

</sarcasm>

As I said in another thread, practicing doctors are not the same as medical researchers.  Practicing doctors get taught next to nothing about nutrition and they pass on all kinds of misinformation. 

Look at the old food pyramid—it was based on what American food producers were prepared to sell!  Not on what is healthy for a body.  Milk doesn’t actually belong on it anywhere, for example.  It’s just part of the supermarket’s food order.  We’d laugh at a food pyramid with a place for kimchee, but it’s the same culture-bound kind of inclusion.

Ben D:

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/welcome-to-fat-health-care-horror-stories/

GeekGirlsRule, how many people do you rationally think are like Ben D.‘s aunt, and how many are like your great grandmother?

Essie,

At the end of the day, thermodynamics is the floor.  You eat less than you need, you will lose weight.  Do our bodies want us to put on weight?  Yes.  For sugar-sensitive people like me, does eating sugar/starches give me hunger cravings?  Yes.  Is it really not fun to lose weight?  For me, mostly not, although again, for me, cutting out carbs and increasing fat makes it less unpleasant.

Frankly, I would rather the focus be on muscle and on athletic performance (with flexibility here—some people love running, some swimming, some dance, some hiking, some weightlifting) and body comp, not simply weight.  But as a country, we are falling down on all fronts.

Wow, fifteen pounds you lost when you went to college and then lost it!  You are truly an expert in being fat and then losing weight.

Never said I was an “expert”.

If I wanted to be an “expert” I guess I should have told the doctor that he was fat shaming me and that I wouldn’t do anything yo lose weight and would, in fact, gain 30 more pounds just to show him what-for.

Christ, this thread is going nowhere.

Oh, for the love of fuck, I was being a smart ass, Shah8. 

I no more believe that eating a rasher of bacon every morning is good for me, even though I’ve got her genetic predisposition for disgustingly low cholesterol, than I think mainlining powdered sugar is a good idea.

oldfeminist,

Seconded on the food pyramid sucking and researchers knowing more than doctors.  Although, even with researchers, there is that old trope that science advances one funeral at a time.

You believe that you can change a kid’s weight for the long-term, but you (I assume) don’t believe that height is a choice.
Comment #120: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 02:13 PM

Well, if you underfeed children, they don’t get as tall.  You can choose to the extent that you can stunt growth.

Not that that sounds like a good idea, but it is a “choice.”

Never said I was an “expert”.

If I wanted to be an “expert” I guess I should have told the doctor that he was fat shaming me and that I wouldn’t do anything yo lose weight and would, in fact, gain 30 more pounds just to show him what-for.

Christ, this thread is going nowhere.
Comment #135: Ben D.  on 02/09 at 02:21 PM

My point is, you pull out that “I’ve lost weight by eating less” as if that proves that diet DOES TOO WORK when in fact you were not “overweight” except for one short period of your life, when you were in college and your eating habits diverged from what you normally ate and what was comfortable for your body.  You stopped eating like a college student and your weight returned to your usual weight.

Which is what usually happens to fat people after they stop dieting and return to what is comfortable for their bodies.

Ismone,

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

The human body is a remarkable and incredibly complex and sophisticated system that normally keeps all sorts of things in balance, such as our fluid and electrolyte levels, our body temperature… and, yes, even our fat stores. When fat levels deviate from each body’s natural range, compensatory mechanisms kick in over weeks to return the body to its individual normal state, all without us having to think about it or having much to say about it. Even when eating a range of calories, our body weights stay within a surprisingly narrow range. The Law of Thermodynamics is more complicated than just calories eaten and burned in exercise, but it works in the body just like any other system.

“Body weight is remarkably stable in humans,” explained Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University in New York. “The average human consumes one million or more calories per year, yet weight changes very little in most people. These facts lead to the conclusion that energy balance is regulated with a precision of greater than 99.5%, which far exceeds what can be consciously monitored.” In fact, error ranges in food calorie labels, assessed by calorimetry, are typically greater than 10%!

Scientists at Rockefeller University have conducted some of the most detailed, complex and precise metabolic research on energy balance and the biochemistry of fat, and shown in their renowned studies that fat people are metabolically no different from lean people, except they’re bigger. When within the weight range genetically normal for them, a fat person’s energy (caloric) balance per unit of lean body mass is indistinguishable from that of a ‘normal’ weight person. Fat people eat and burn calories no differently than naturally thinner people.

No kidding, Ben D.@135.

Some of you people need to actually read the plan’s details.  None of it is at all controversial, and most of it, if it goes through unmolested, would do a great deal of good…success or no success.

This is just rank ideology over health.

Because it’s not just about healthy living.  If I may paraphrase our president, we’re not going to solve the structural problems with our food supply and our urban planning just because I eat a low-calorie lunch and take a walk after work.  It’s got to be something collective, because all individual action does is convince people that it’s a personal issue, not a societal one.

Right. Perhaps healthy living wasn’t the right phrase then, because I do agree with you here, but doesn’t focusing on obesity make it a personal issue? It strikes me as the difference between saying “you need to get thin” vs. “we need to change how we, as a society, relate to/think about/interact with food and space” because it will make us all healthier, not just skinnier. Obesity just seems to be such a narrow/small/limited measure of the changes that need to take place.

Ok, 1.  can we all agree that we ALL think introducing more veggies and stuff and more movement into kids’ lives is a good thing? 

2.  Can we all agree that using weight as the indicator is a stupid idea?  And that the BMI is even stupider?

And 3.  can we all agree that resting heart rate and actual evidence of an increase in fitness, even if there is no corresponding decrease in weight, is acceptable, even if we can’t agree to #2?

Neither Essie, nor myself, nor Ponygirl, nor anyone else is voting to decrease kids’ access to healthy food and exercise. 

One of Essie’s objections is that often times these campaigns foster an attitude of “Look at those dumb, fat, poor people who don’t known how to eat!”  When the fact is that there are plenty of poor fat people who would eat better, if the food were affordable and available (see the concept of food deserts), and plenty of thin rich people who eat like shit and keel over at 40 in spite of having a more acceptable body type. 

If this can be done without the fat-shaming and condescension to poor people, then Woooooo!!!!!  GO!!!!  But this subject has so many pitfalls built in that I think people who’ve never lived any of these issues (poor, fat, no access to decent foods, no time to prepare it in if they could get it) don’t realize just how insidious and difficult to overcome they can be.

Phylosopher says, “Just make the time.”  Yeah, that’s great for you and me, who probably only work one job, that ascribes to what my grandfather would call “white man’s hours.”  I can make the time to cook, and usually do (or rather the husband does) AND go to the gym even.  But what about all those folks working more than one job, or trying to also improve their education so they can get a better job and maybe be able to work one more job?  Now add kids to (and I know Phylosopher mentioned his, but he also has a decent job) the mix of multiple jobs and/or school.

My point is, you pull out that “I’ve lost weight by eating less”

It was actually by cutting out beer for two months (and drinking drastically less than I did in college after that) and going back to running. I ate more or less the same.

GeekGirlsRule...

fine, you might have been a smartass, but do you know what?  I’m around, literally, tons of people who have been disabled by their obesity.  I’m around tons of people who are miserable in their late middle ages because they can’t do the things they used to be able to do.  That they are in constant joint pain, and impoverished by expensive medical bills for a number of surgeries, let alone the standard stereotype of diabetes management.  This is just not an issue that is irrelevant to me.  We are fucking able to have this conversation about dentistry all the time without people yelling about oppression against people without teeth or with ugly teeth, even though that is about as serious an issue as fat shaming.  That’s because a) people know that it’s about class b) this is a problem that affect relatively more poor people and fewer people with actual voices, unlike weight.

<blockquote>Also, keep your patronization away from my work outs.  The next person to call me a “good girl” for going to the gym eats their own teeth.
Comment #36: GeekGirlsRule on 02/09 at 01:06 PM <blockquote>

Aiii - there are gyms and there are gyms - I pointed this out on another thread.  Best gym I ever worked out at - real lifters were BIG, non-judgmental, except about how much you could lift (ribbing in a good natured way)  helpful to beginners - it was a natural - non-steroid - gym.  The most respected lifter there was a woman in her ‘60’s who looked like a stout, grey-haired grandma who had started lifting late in life but competed nationally.  If all else is equal, looking for that kind of gym alleviates a lot of the condescension.

Essie,

Good points all.  There is a lot of give in the system.  But that only goes so far.  It goes far enough to make weight loss difficult/annoying/obnoxious, but not so far that if you dramatically cut calories and keep everything else within your control the same (movement, how many layers you wear, etc.) you will lose weight.  Maybe not as much as you might be able to simply calculate, but it will happen.  There are no overweight people during famines.  (Unless they’re rich and have access to food.)

Right now, we eat more and move less than our parents and grandparents did, and we’re carrying the extra weight. 

That doesn’t mean that everyone who is over x pounds is unhealthy, but a lot of us are.  And the only way to fix that is to change what and how much we eat and how much we move.

Shit, Last paragraph should be “... or trying to also improve their education so they can get a better job and maybe be able to work JUST one job?” 

God damned typos. 

Also, what is so evil about framing it as pro-health versus anti-obesity?  No one has answered that question.

Also oldfeminist, you make a good point about dieting. The solution isn’t dieting but remembering what you ate and what you did before you gained the weight. Of course if you’ve never been a normal weight, that’s impossible, which is why it’s important for kids in schools to develop good eating habits early—so if they gain weight later in life they can say “hey, what did I eat like/exercise like BEFORE I gained the weight?” and go back to that.

Ok, 1.  can we all agree that we ALL think introducing more veggies and stuff and more movement into kids’ lives is a good thing? 

2.  Can we all agree that using weight as the indicator is a stupid idea?  And that the BMI is even stupider?

And 3.  can we all agree that resting heart rate and actual evidence of an increase in fitness, even if there is no corresponding decrease in weight, is acceptable, even if we can’t agree to #2?

Yes, yes, and yes. For me, at least.

It’s worth pointing out that within the city limits of Detroit, there is not a single supermarket. While there are a large number of organic farms (gotta do something with those empty lots), the appalling lack of access in poor urban areas to fresh produce is criminal.

Phylosopher, fortunately working at a University, I have access to the University’s gym, and after the initial rush during fall quarter and right after the new year,  most of the regulars are either athletes or serious about their training and pretty nice. 

All the run-ins I’ve had their (and they are very few) have been in those first two danger periods.  I hate the beginning of the school year and the New Year. 

The problem, again, for most people is access and affordability.  Most people don’t have as wide an array of gym choices as we would like.

Maybe American children could eat anecdotes instead of corn syrup.

It’d help the farmers, by encouraging production. And, of course, it will cut back on DEATHFATS, which will cut back on health care spending, so the program will pay for itself! And you’d not only be educating kids about nutrition, you’d be empowering them to use that education.

And your measure of success? The increased turnover of fruits and vegetables and the decreased turnover of all the “bad” foods. Would that be “number-y” enough?

Maybe then we could segue into free condoms in health class…....
Comment #90: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 01:51 P

sorry, you don’t get away with this one - supermarkets, help the farmers?  HAHAHAHAHAHA
It’s February - so fruit and vegetable farmers in Chile, MAYBE.  And BIG AG in the Central Valley, maybe. And what was bought with those coupons would be no real indicator of what was actually consumed.

I vacationed in Florida a few years ago - couldn’t find a Florida grown orange or grapefruit in any of the local groceries, not even the roadside stands. 

ANd you were right about one thing, unless we also sponsored field trips to the grocery store for those living in food deserts - unlikely to be useful.

People are going to be assholes, and there is just nothing you can do about it.  It’s a cheap status high, alright?

Oh, and we use weight to judge over a population because that is the most accessible measure we have.  It’s certainly a better measurement than cholesterol, heart rate, and many other things for judging over a population, not just for accuracy, but for transparency of issues (so long as you’re willing to accept the metric’s shallowness, and that willingness has been spreading among newly minted doctors).  Losing that wieght, under the guide of a proper dietician and physical therapist, will generally solve a huge number of your health problems and prevent more.  It’s the proverbial low-hanging fruit.  That’s why the medical profession uses weight as a metric.

And it’s not just the inner cities.

Middle class kids in the suburbs might have Mom be able to drive to the grocery store but subdivisions built since the 1980s have no sidewalks, big-ass lots, and confusing culd-de-sacs. They’re not walkable.

New subdivisions should be a GRIDIRON PATTERN with sidewalks and lots to scale, like in the old days.

It goes far enough to make weight loss difficult/annoying/obnoxious, but not so far that if you dramatically cut calories and keep everything else within your control the same (movement, how many layers you wear, etc.) you will lose weight.

I invite you to lurk at Kate Harding’s site, then, where you will meet many, many people who remained fat despite years of “dramatically cutting calories” and finally came to accept that bodies are more complicated than that.

I’m glad that conventional wisdom works for you, I really am, but you are stating things as facts that <u>are not facts</u>. And, basically, when I and other people tell you “We cut our calories and we did not lose weight”, you are saying, “No, you’re wrong, you must have done something wrong because my worldview is right.”

Okay, that’s great, jezebel, but what other measurements do you use?  Scientists who do this for a living say that weight is a pretty damn good measure—-not perfect, but better than anything else we’ve got for measuring trends across populations.  I want solutions, not simply assuming the worst motives in public health officials.

I don’t think there’s any scientific consensus on this.  I’ve seen numerous studies that show that moderately overweight people outlive thin people, for example. 

One measure of success is to see if the changes have actually been translated into changes in the children’s lifestyles.
-How do the new school food lunches compare to the old ones on several measures - as far as healthy nutrients vs. saturated fat/added sugars?
-How many lunches are being purchased compared to before?  If it’s lower, why? and what can we do to make the healthy school lunches more palatable? 
-In my opinion, if a school is selling more volume of healthier school lunches, that in itself is a success metric.
-If students are getting more physical activity, that in itself is a success metric.

And then there’s many other measurements that people have already mentioned:
-resting heart rate
-blood pressure
-cholesterol
-blood sugar
-testing for anemia and other vitamin deficiencies
-incidence of type 2 diabetes in children (this is seen as one of the biggest pieces of evidence as to why fat children are a crisis11!, so why not focus on that)

It’s not about being invested in keeping children fat.  It’s about wanting children to be healthy without giving them a pathological weight obsession.  Whether you weigh the children “in secret” or not, it doesn’t matter.  Weight is obvious and yet, health is not.

supermarkets, help the farmers?  HAHAHAHAHAHA
It’s February - so fruit and vegetable farmers in Chile, MAYBE.

*headdesk*

I would have thought it was obvious that my plan would be year-round, not JUST in February.

Also, may I introduce your condescending ass to the concept of green houses? The local, organic farmers that I have a co-op with use them and would LOVE to have goverment subsidies to ramp up production.

No. We assume people return to old eating habits BECAUSE the weight comes back, and who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes? Conventional wisdom states that diets MUST work, so it they don’t, then you MUST have gone off your diet.

So the fact that scientists put people on fad diets and expected them to stay on that fad diet for 5 years proves that changing the way you eat is always a failure?

Yes, I not only clicked through to the post, I also clicked through to the study, and that’s what the study did:  put people on fad diets (high-protein, high-carb, the Zone, etc.) and then followed them for 5 years to see if they could stay on that fad diet.  And, hey, what a shock, trying to live your life on a fad diet long-term doesn’t work!  Stop the presses!

I think everyone can (I hope?) agree fad diets are bullshit. They’re part of the problem in more than one way.

The main problem with delinking actual measurements of weights across population from health outcomes is that deprives of us the best way to measure how well we’re doing.

What about cholesterol and resting heart rate and the presidential physical fitness test? I’m not saying we should ignore weight. I do believe it is a factor in evaluating one’s health, can have detrimental effects on a person’s health, etc. But to make it so central - as in, having a campaign against obesity rather than against diabetes or for healthier lifestyles/infrastructure/whatever - seems misguided. It is not the only metric we have to assess the health of a population.

You can implement programs, but unless you allow yourself to measure their effectiveness, you can’t see flaws.

Yes, I get that. My point is that obesity should not be the only measure you look at. I can get a group of high school girls to go bulimic real quick, which would make them all thin, but I doubt that’s the sort of thing we want.

UHm, regarding that study about being thin causing more deaths, in case anyone hasn’t heard, cancers and other long term diseases tend to cause extreme weight loss.  or, as the linked to linked article explained:

Flegal noted that there might have been a large number of frail elderly people in the normal-weight category, which might have affected the findings (Wahlberg, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/20). The new study does not offer a reason why being slightly overweight correlated with a reduced risk of death. Study co-author David Williamson of CDC said that most people are over age 70 when they die, and some excess weight appears to have a protective effect in old age. However, Williamson also noted that the reasons behind the “paradox” are theoretical at this point, saying, “It’s raw conjecture” (New York Times, 4/20).

I wanna throw in here that as warm-blooded mammals, human beings expend the vast majority of calories we consume maintaining our body temperature.

So the whole thing about the Laws of Thermodynamics and calories in food and body weight is a little more complicated than weight=calories consumed.  Small changes in metabolism can easily have a much greater effect than just changing the overall calories consumed. 

(...and if I ever have a blog of my own, I can see that weight/body image/health topics generate a lot of responses.  Good to know…)

rebelliousjezebel...

People are diverse, biologically.  There are NO measures that are without their flaws, and most do not have the peripheral advantages that measuring weight does.  It would be nice if a wide variety of measures were used to comprehend health, however, that is only usefully manageable by people pretty far downstream and local.  When you need one statistic, to use it best, you probably have to get a couple more statistics, like family income etc, etc.  When you try multiple statistics to handle one qualitative concept, you end up needing exponential amount of peripheral info + multiiple classes of professionals to take in, sort, and interpret that data (and you can still get a bad picture).  There is a value to an obviously flawed measure, not least because it’s easier to explain how the model fails.

This whole “diets don’t work” thing.  The reason “diets don’t work” in the long term is that people usually revert to old eating habits after the diet is over and their goals are reached.  If you drop to 800-1200 calories per day, you will lose weight (note—I’m not recommending this for anyone who is very old, has health problems, or has difficulty with mobility.) If after you lose the weight you want to keep it off, you need to figure out how many calories per day you can eat and not gain weight.  Then eat that many.  Then, if you need to, correct downward if you put on some weight.

These kind of micro-adjustments are the sort I notice slender people making.  I.e., an ex roommate who would eat 1/2 to 2/3 of what she ordered and take the rest home for leftovers.  Or a friend who, after we went to a huge lunch said “well, I’m not going to have to eat dinner tonight.” Yes, some people have faster metabolisms, some have slower, but at the end of the day, it is thermodynamics.

No.  Severe calorie restriction (and 800-1200 calories is extremely severe) trains the body to live on much fewer calories than it should need to survive.  As a result, when people stop dieting, even if they try to follow the prescribed calorie allotment for their height and weight, they’ll still regain.  If you lose weight through dieting, you have to diet (live on 800-1200 calories per day) for the rest of your life.  I’ve tried calorie-restrictive dieting, it’s crazy inducing.  It’s not surprising that most people who try diets never even manage to reach their goal weight, let alone keep the weight off when they’ve allegedly stopped their diet.

I’ve also seen how extremely thin people eat.  More power to them if they want to live that way (I have a skinny coworker who eats a banana for breakfast and a few spoonfuls of watery soup and less a half of a sandwich for lunch), but most people can’t live that way, nor should they have to.

And it’s not fucking thermodynamics.  The human body is designed to fight weight loss.  It’s basic evolutionary biology for fuck’s sake.

MikeEss,

But our body temp. is within certain narrow ranges.  So yes, if someone starts dieting and then turns up the heat in their apartment, avoids going outdoors, wears more layers, they will burn fewer calories than if they don’t do these things.  But our body, unlike reptiles, does not go outside a narrow range, so unless we’re doing exterior things re: temperature, the amount of calories we burn that way won’t change much.

Essie,

I don’t know how little they’re eating, and whether (as would be natural) they are becoming more lethargic as a result of eating less or their body is telling them to do other things (avoid the cold!  wear layers! don’t wander around the office as much as they used to!), but it cannot be a coincidence that we are eating more and moving less than prior generations and are carrying more weight.  And thermodynamics is a floor.  You simply cannot put on weight if you are eating fewer calories than you are burning.  In that way, the body is a closed system.  There’s just a lot of slopover based on movement, perhaps even based on fidgeting, and based on whether we wear the extra sweatshirt or not.

“I vacationed in Florida a few years ago - couldn’t find a Florida grown orange or grapefruit in any of the local groceries, not even the roadside stands.”

This could be the culprit, and I believe there are some other citrus diseases in Florida that make their oranges fit for juicing but not eating…

...and it’s spreading to California…

I’ve had a terrible case of bronchitis/pneumonia for two weeks now… and I’ve lost ten pounds. This is awesome.

That’s among several serious agricultural disasters that have been brewing for some time now.  There are also major threats to the avocado, wheat, and banana industries as well.  One of the things I’m so damned pissed off about the world for is that Mosanto’s collection of expertise and resources could be used to solve some truly serious problems instead of making plays for legal shelters involving genetic patents or engendering dependence on their herbicides—goooooodddddaaaaammmnnn…

And no, no stupid show shit like golden rice please…

Keshmeshi,

You can call it what you want, but ancestrally, even with adequate diets, we tended to be a lot smaller.  The problem is that the environment has changed—we’re programmed to want to eat as much as we can whenever food is available, but now, food is always available.  Yes, our bodies will try to get us to put on weight, and keep it on.  But that doesn’t mean that is a good thing.  The environment has really, really changed.

Now, if it isn’t worth it to you, and you’ve done your CBA, that’s fine.  But that doesn’t make it impossible.  It makes it not worth it.  For me, I feel much better when I’m at my goal weight than when I’m 20-30 pounds over.  In all kinds of ways.  If you don’t, or if anyone else doesn’t, fine.

But we should not pretend that it is impossible.

Look, I don’t have an M.D. I just know when my doctor tells me to do something (like when he told me to lose +/- 15 pounds) it was probably a good idea to do it since he knows more about the body than I ever will. Just like I listen to climate scientists about Global Warming and biologists about evolution. They’re experts, I’m not.

Except that the Western medical tradition, in particular, has a long tradition of faddish stupidity in this particular area.  You’re actually not advocating for science; you’re advocating for folk medicine instead of science.  That’s the problem.

At the end of the day, thermodynamics is the floor.  You eat less than you need, you will lose weight.

Nope. Or, at least, this is a disingenuous argument. For some (possibly a lot) of people, the “eating fewer calories” part of that equation actually equals “at or below starvation levels”. And even then, most bodies simply assume you’re, you know, starving and will fight you to the death to hold onto every pound you have. Read The Obesity Myth, or Rethinking Thin.

Yes, the body has a complicated feedback system governing putting on weight and taking it off.  That doesn’t mean that thermodynamics doesn’t apply.  Thermodynamics is the basis for the feedback system.  If you eat less than you burn you will lose weight.  Period.  Physics does not magically cease to apply inside human bodies.

This is absolutely not the same as saying diets work.  They don’t.  Because of that feedback loop, based on thermodynamics.  Your body does everything it can to keep weight nearly constant.  It alters basal metabolism, it discourages exercise, and encourages eating more.  Willpower does not suffice, your body will break it (and willpower will do nothing for basal metabolism).

You simply cannot put on weight if you are eating fewer calories than you are burning.

There are, I’m afraid, documented cases of people gaining weight while fasting. So, yeah, you CAN put on weight, even when eating less than 800 calories.

You can call it what you want, but ancestrally, even with adequate diets, we tended to be a lot smaller.  The problem is that the environment has changed—we’re programmed to want to eat as much as we can whenever food is available, but now, food is always available.  Yes, our bodies will try to get us to put on weight, and keep it on.  But that doesn’t mean that is a good thing.  The environment has really, really changed.

You didn’t actually read anything I wrote, did you?  Like about how fat people have to live on starvation diets permanently to stay thin?  You know one problem with starvation diets?  Even if you have the willpower to stay on it permanently, which no one does, you wind up not getting adequate nutrition in the long run.  That’s sure great for a person’s health, don’t you think?

In short, just shut up.

Once again, I fail to understand why this whole shebang has to be framed as “anti-obesity” when it could be just as easily framed as “pro-health”.  No one seems to want to answer that point, made by many people.

I did answer that point, but I think it was before you joined the thread:  it’s because Americans suck.  We are not going to do something because it might maybe possibly do us some good 20 years down the road.  We want not only instant gratification, but instant danger—if it’s not something that’s going to affect us tomorrow, we won’t do it.

“You can call it what you want, but ancestrally, even with adequate diets, we tended to be a lot smaller.”

Very true.  But ancestrally, we didn’t tend to live anything like as long as we do now either.  Biological “engineering” that works okay for the first 20-30-40 years may not be adequate at all for 70-80-90 years.

We were “designed” to live long enough to reproduce and give our relatively-helpless-at-birth offspring a good enough start to continue the species…

You can call it what you want, but ancestrally, even with adequate diets, we tended to be a lot smaller.

We also tended to be shorter. So we’re getting taller AND heavier.

But - here’s the thing - the BMI doesn’t adjust well for that.

It’s worth noting that being taller is linked to “health problems” as well, but you don’t hear people bitching about the height epidemic.

And now we get to the “That’s just folk science!”, and the ever so awesome “shut up”.

Yeah, dentists never have to fight this sort of entrenched bullshit.

Isn’t it strange that people who can be open-minded about sexual and civil rights can be so terribly, terribly puritanical about food?  You’d think that it would be all of a piece, but I guess not.  I have the right to indulge in these pleasures to any degree that I see fit.  Because, you know what’s good?  Cake.  Cake is good.  Cake is life.  I like cake, I like chocolate, I like bread and butter and cheese far more than I like being a size two, or even a size ten.  I make no apologies for liking these things.

I would expect any one of you to condemn someone who tries to shame you for enjoying your sexuality to the fullest, or who tried to restrict your rights based on your perceived sexuality, race, gender or other similar quality.  Likewise, I have nothing but contempt for anyone who shrieks bloody murder at me because I have the gall to consume more than 1500 calories a day.  I can’t be bothered to name names but some of you on this forum can go straight to hell.

and the ever so awesome “shut up”.

Peopl tend to have an emotional response to being told to starve themselves. It’s worth noting that people have died, recently, from 800 calorie diets. So, yeah, it’s a touchy subject - I wonder why.

Likewise, I have nothing but contempt for anyone who shrieks bloody murder at me because I have the gall to consume more than 1500 calories a day.

But don’t you understand that being faithful to broccoli isn’t slut-shaming, it’s for your health? You should be more careful of FTDs (food-transmitted diseases).

Ismone, why is it so difficult for you to understand that the body resists weight loss by lowering your metabolism?  Yes, eventually we can eat few enough calories to the point where the body can’t possibly continue essential functions on what we eat and will eventually lose weight.  But, it will also put us into a starvation mode to the point that we will gain the weight back if we start eating a normal amount again, not to mention the fact that putting yourself on a diet with inadequate nutrients is likely to cause other health problems and prevent you from getting adequate physical activity.  Frankly I would rather be 15 pounds overweight and energetic, than feel weak and lightheaded because I’m starving.  And starving is the ONLY way my body loses ANY weight.  Moderate calorie reduction doesn’t work.  Increase in physical activity doesn’t work.  Drinking water instead of calorie laden beverages doesn’t work.  Eating more fiber and complex carbs instead of sugary junk doesn’t work.

I’ve read what you wrote, and I’ve read a lot of source material on this subject.

You can burn 400 calories with about 30 mins. to an hour of exercise if you want to.  Yes, it might be possible, for some subset to put on weight on 800 calories if they were able to bring their movement/calories spent on heating themselves down dramatically.  Also “a few documented cases” doesn’t mean it is true for everyone, or even for a significant enough fraction of everyone that we throw up our hands and quit.

But please, keep telling me to “shut up”, keshmeshi.  Because that’s such an intelligent argument.  If it isn’t worth it to you, fine, admit it isn’t worth it.

MikeEss, I’m not sure which way your point is meant to cut.  The people who are 70-80-90 right now did not eat like we do.  We don’t know that our life expectancy will hold, with our sedentary lifestyle.  And if it does, whether it will be due to other medical advances that would have lengthened life even more if it weren’t for being sedentary.

Essie,

I already said that I think we should pretty much ignore BMI.  And with tallness = health problems, some of that has to do with genetic illnesses that cause tallness, i.e., Marfan’s so I’d be careful with that analysis.

it cannot be a coincidence that we are eating more and moving less than prior generations and are carrying more weight

Apparently the fact that restaurant portions have skyrocketed at the same time that more Americans than ever are eating out has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that, on average, Americans weigh more than they did 20 years ago when portions were smaller.  Nope, it’s all genetics, QED.

I think that this is what drives me nuts about these discussions more than anything else:  I point out all of the ways that the food industry is manipulating us to make us eat more, and people keep insisting that, nope, it’s all to do with their individual genetic makeup.  It’s like a weird form of Stockholm Syndrome—people can’t admit that outside forces may have made them heavier than their natural body type would be.  We even have books like Mindless Eating that show the ways that we are manipulated to eat more and people still insist on personalizing it.  I just don’t get it.

As usual, I’m late to the discussion but I hope Ben is still listening . . .

Ben?  I am 5’9”, and when I was still working I weighed 170.  I was not “overweight”.  I was muscular.  I did physically demanding work.  My co-workers thought I was “skinny”.

Now I have developed polymyositis, a disease where one loses muscle tissue to an autoimmune response.  I weigh maybe 150 in a good week, and I am “overweight”, flabby, not strong.  That’s because my weight isn’t made up of muscle any more.

Please don’t be so prescriptive.  You cannot generalize so easily, because people are not all alike.  I know, doctors make this mistake too.  That doesn’t excuse it.

rebelliousjezebel,

I understand that our bodies resist weight loss.  But it cannot beat it if we eat less and move more.  With regard to “starvation mode” if you could show me some studies, that would be great.  There are ways to deal with how hypocaloric states tend to cause metabolism to slow—in the weighlifiting community, they’re called “structured refeeds.”  And for you, if you’d rather be 15 pounds overweight according to whomever, that’s great.  Again, it’s about CBA.  But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to be otherwise.  It just means it isn’t worth it to you.  And that is totally fine, in my book, to the exten anyone cares.

dillene,

I have no problem with your choice or anyone else’s choice.  But that’s because it’s a choice.  I don’t want people thinking they don’t have control when they do.  The cost of that “control” may not be worth it to them, and that’s fine.

Ismone, the reason keshmeshi told you to shut up is because you are advocating <u>starvation diets for life</u> for people.

You’ve agreed that, metabolism being what it is, that once people get back up off the 800 calories, they will gain weight back. So you’re saying “If people want to be thin, all they have to do is eat 800 calories…for the rest of their life.”

OK, follow me here, do you know WHY that’s called a “starvation” diet? Because if you stay on one indefinitely, you starve. To death. So you are - rather flippantly and callously, in your well-meaning, cheerful ignorance - suggesting that fat people should kill themselves. I know you don’t MEAN it that way, but that is what you are doing.

I seriously advocate that you to please take a moment to read up on fat acceptance and body acceptance, because we’re just rehashing FA 101 at this point and it’s frustrating. You’ve already agreed that fat people have the same metabolism and calorie requirements as thin people. You understand that fat people are not fatter because they eat MORE than you (they don’t), you believe they are fat because they don’t eat LESS than you. Even if it kills them. And that’s not cool.

some of that has to do with genetic illnesses that cause tallness

Agreed. Which makes it a GREAT analogy, because a lot of the “fat” health problems are genetic as well.

Yes, the body has a complicated feedback system governing putting on weight and taking it off.  That doesn’t mean that thermodynamics doesn’t apply.  Thermodynamics is the basis for the feedback system.  If you eat less than you burn you will lose weight.  Period.  Physics does not magically cease to apply inside human bodies.

This is absolutely not the same as saying diets work.  They don’t.  Because of that feedback loop, based on thermodynamics.  Your body does everything it can to keep weight nearly constant.  It alters basal metabolism, it discourages exercise, and encourages eating more.  Willpower does not suffice, your body will break it (and willpower will do nothing for basal metabolism).

So you agree that going on and on about thermodynamics is pointless, since a body, faced with restricted calories, will make it physically impossible for you to burn more calories.

Essie Elephant, I would never, nor would any diligent and empathetic primary care physician (let’s leave off japan, and any other places that like easy answers like just lose weight), tell you to starve yourself.  If you’re seriously overweight, your own body will tell me.  Do your knees hurt?  Can you go up more than a flight of stairs or two?  Is the blood pressure high?  How’s your back?  On and so forth down the list.  It’s not especially hard, actually.  And if you’re overweight and your doctor, who’s not an asshole because you have the ability to choose a nonasshole (forgive the assumption of class), tells you to lose weight, how are you going to respond?  Most sane doctors I’ve ever heard of have dealt with plenty of overweight people who are strongly medically indicated for weight loss.  Most of them, if they are any good, develop a touch for explaining the need to lose weight, and develope a sane, not totally impossible weight-loss plan (with the previous experience with a professional nutritionist/exercise person), and if you follow their recommendations, most of them will be deleriously happy that you did, and will be thoroughly be willing to help tweek your strategy to help you with your overall health, including weight, no matter if you gained or lost a pound.

But do you know who can’t do all of that?  Public health specialist and government officials who are concerned with the overall health.

Sorry, what makes it a starvation diet?  You need to tell me how much movement and how much exercise is “starvation” in order for me to even answer that.  I don’t think people need to only eat 800 calories for the rest of their lives in order to maintain weight if they can also maintain activity.  And I’ve also seen my husband eat only 800 calories for months on end and work out like a mofo because he wanted to lean out.

Re: height/genetics weight/genetics, you’d have to explain why there was an increase.  We have a bunch of taller people now because of better diet.  If we look at old data that shows height = poor health outcomes, we will be looking at data that is more skewed by genetic syndromes than data today is, because more people were tall then had abnormalities.

You eat less than you need, you will lose weight.

This simply never worked for me. I’m not a doctor or a researcher or anything else. I don’t know the studies and can’t cite numbers. But for me, for my body, the calories in vs. calories out model was not good enough.

I lost weight when I started to focus on the types of calories I was consuming, not the amount. I just don’t eat processed foods or high carb foods as a regular part of my diet, end of story. It goes back to the issue of reading labels. If you are confused by a label - if you have to actually research an ingredient, or if there are more than just a few ingredients in something - you probably shouldn’t be eating it.

That’s just me, though. Through YEARS of trial and error (seriously, years) I have found the combination of food and exercise that works for me. Every body is different, and while there are general rules that I think apply across the board (eat fruits and veggies, get some exercise), every body will respond differently to different things.

“We don’t know that our life expectancy will hold, with our sedentary lifestyle.  And if it does, whether it will be due to other medical advances that would have lengthened life even more if it weren’t for being sedentary.”

My point is we’ve been in uncharted territory for quite some time.  The same is true when it comes to diet and a lot of other aspects of being human.  So going the old “but ancient humans were like x” route is fraught with problems.  Our lives are so different from our ancestors that it’s difficult to draw solid conclusions (that can be used to accurately adjust how we live now) from the enormous changes that have occurred…

As a light-hearted LOL, I’d be interested in knowing the specifics of what “good” food will be advocated on this anti-obesity plan? I ask because I note, humourously, that <u>every</u> food in the example photo has been given as an example to me of what, precisely, will cause weight gain and wreck my diet, er, lifestyle choice.

Yes, even the carrots. :D

http://kateharding.net/2008/01/03/helpful-diet-tips/

Back when I was weight lifting and fat, and working on body composition and fat… Did I mention I was/am fat? Anyway, I was working very hard on championship level lifting. So working hard to lift more and more weights. And my trainer had me on a diet that was mostly vegetables and protein , extremely low fat (about 5% fat in diet) and so on. It was very hard to do, but I did it. After several months I went in for the testing and hadn’t lost any weight. In fact, my weight went up, but my body composition stayed the same. I still had plenty of fat and the trainer was mystified. Until she looked at my eating records and saw that I had eaten a handful of baby carrots a day. I love baby carrots.

‘Oh no, not carrots’ She gave me a serious look. ‘They make you fat.’

Sorry, what makes it a starvation diet?  You need to tell me how much movement and how much exercise is “starvation” in order for me to even answer that.  I don’t think people need to only eat 800 calories for the rest of their lives in order to maintain weight if they can also maintain activity.  And I’ve also seen my husband eat only 800 calories for months on end and work out like a mofo because he wanted to lean out.

What makes it a starvation diet? How about that you are advocating calorie-intake based on what makes you “lose weight” rather than what keeps you alive:

If you drop to 800-1200 calories per day, you will lose weight (note—I’m not recommending this for anyone who is very old, has health problems, or has difficulty with mobility.) If after you lose the weight you want to keep it off, you need to figure out how many calories per day you can eat and not gain weight.  Then eat that many.

This is not hypothetical ivory tower bull-shitting around we’re doing. People die from doing this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211954/Bride-crash-diet-death—eating-just-530-calories-day-11-weeks.html

You are not a doctor. You <u>cannot say that eating to lose weight is healthy</u> because you don’t bloody know that for everyone, or indeed, for anyone! You are giving bad advice, advice that gets people KILLED, and then acting hurt and upset when someone tells you to “shut up”.

Nobody gives a shit about someone eating 530 calories a day.  Anorexia isn’t the topic of the day.

From an economic standpoint, this makes perfect sense. Since the federal government (IOW, taxpayers) subsidizes both milk and the grain used to feed cows, it behooves them to encourage as much milk consumption as possible to cut down on the subsidy cost. But from a public-health standpoint, it just stinks.
Comment #65: Bitter Scribe on 02/09 at 01:32 PM

They subsidiz unhealthy even more directly - the entire USDA grading system - for which farmers get a premium in the industry - reflects backasswards thinking.  Prime = more fat (technically, more marbling, but marbling IS fat)  and we’ve bought into it.  And everyone, from chefs to eaters pay more for what is actually worse for us.

Re: height/genetics weight/genetics, you’d have to explain why there was an increase.

Here’s the thing: no, I don’t.

I don’t have to explain why people are getting taller. And I don’t have to explain why people are getting fatter. You want to blame taller on better diets? Well, that’s a good theory - why not apply it to weight gain?

You’ve already been shown that “overweight” people have they best life-expectancy, of all the BMI categories. So why are you acting like “overweight” is a big deal, if you’re generally worried about HEALTH and not asthetics?

The simple reason is that you don’t believe it - the data doesn’t skew with your prejudices. Fat MUST be unhealthy, because that’s what you’ve always believed. And you know what? It’s your right to believe that. It’s Michelle Obama’s right to believe it, too.

But don’t tell me that the Obamas (or you, for that matter) are basing policy and opinion on science at that point. Because you’re not.

Shah8, she wasn’t anorexic. She was on a calorie restricting diet.

Or, as Ismone put it:

you need to figure out how many calories per day you can eat and not gain weight.  Then eat that many.

And, yes, 530 is more extreme than the numbers Ismone was throwing out, but you know what? This has happened many times on higher “low calorie” diets. I just pulled the most recent one in memory.

Nice to know you don’t give a fuck about her, though.

No, I think it’s more about you who don’t give a shit about others.  You want to troll and make this about you.

The woman died because she was on some crappy fad dieting scheme—surrounded with body image issues.  Put simply, NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT FAD DIETS SERIOUSLY.

AShley @ #63 - OK, that’s a reasonable critique of the BMI.  Should taller people have a larger spread index. 
But the rest of your post?  Since there is no where you started, your having lost weight/inches (while good, cool, etc.)  can still mean one is overwiehgt - Just as an extreme example, a 500# person can lose 1/2 their body weight but if they are 5’1” yeah, sorry, they are still obese.

Essie @ #71 yeah right.  So we can watch a loved one, that we used to take long walks with now in pain, now injecting themselves with prescribed chemicals that will eventually kill them, gasping for breath when they walk across the kitchen, but we can’t even think that hmmm if they lost some weight (because they sure as heck seem to take up more space than before) they might be healthier, maybe I shouldn’t bring home a DQ every night.

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT FAD DIETS SERIOUSLY.

No, people are saying to restrict calorie intake until you reach your goal weight. That is what she did.

If she’d succeeded, she’d be “proof” of your thermodynamics theory. She didn’t, and died, so it’s a “fad diet”.

#181 - it’s the ever popular We’re Just Trying To Help brigade that swams in to helpfully suggest all the ways in which fatties are just wrong about everything, cuz they’re fat and ZOMG FAT IS UNHEALTHY!  They know everything about weight issues cuz they totally lost a few pounds once.

Nevermind that Essie is pretty much the ONLY person who provided any evidence for her stance and they provided nothing but what “must” be true cuz someone else told them it was true once.  She clearly hates everyone else because . . .um . .. she disagrees with teh ZOMG! FAT IS UNHEALTHY! brigade.

maybe I shouldn’t bring home a DQ every night.

Hyperbole or are you already doing that?

By the way, your loved one is already fully aware that they are fat - you really aren’t the first person to make that realization.

Once again, I fail to understand why this whole shebang has to be framed as “anti-obesity” when it could be just as easily framed as “pro-health”.

Theory, off the top of my head: Because every American who does not currently have an acute or major chronic condition will describe him or herself as “healthy.” So you pitch a “health” initiative, and most people will shrug and go, “eh, that’s great, but it doesn’t apply to me, I’m totally healthy.”

When in reality, thanks to a lifetime of minimal health care access, piss-poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, and this toxic stew of an environment, most Americans would not know healthy if it bit them in the ass. Fat or thin, doesn’t matter. Most of us are truly very very far from optimal health.

But it’s a hell of a lot easier to live in denial of your shit-tastic lung capacity and calcium-leached bones and astronomical cholesterol levels than it is to ignore the fact that you have gained 60 pounds since high school. And given the choice, in this fat-hostile culture of ours, which program do you think is going to make someone say, “hey, maybe there’s something in that program that would be good for me?”

/me bangs head on desk repeatedly

/me mutters dark profanities

/me gathers himself

...yeah

we’re done, I’m sure plenty of other people are willing to let you scream your blabber, but I’ve gotten burned with as much stupidity as I’m willing to take.

Ismone @ 105 is there a new study - it still seems there is a different outcomes with type of fat consumed - OBviously the triglyceride and trans/hydrogenated, but there also seem to be good studies re: high omega 3 low omega 6 fats.

And the award for the worst twisting of someone’s argument to facilitate a personal vendetta goes to #202!

Thanks, Gypsy Lee.

The website, letsmove.gov, is not exactly what I would call fat-shaming.  The headings are Healthy Choices, Healthier Schools, Physical Activity, Accessible & Affordable Healthy Food.  There is mention of the program’s goal to decrease childhood obesity, but the tone is not cruel or condescending.

I totally agree that people should know more than their doctors about how their own bodies work, because that way we won’t need doctors any more!

I should note that my theory only pertains to why the “anti-obesity” frame MIGHT trump “pro-health” when you are spearheading a national initiative. It doesn’t mean that I think this is the good, correct, moral, or even necessarily most effective approach.

Essie - The speed at which progressives turn into YEC-esque trolls on this issue is fucking astonishing.  They simply don’t hear what you’re saying because ZOMG! FAT IS UNHEALTHY!!! and WE’RE JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU STUPID LAZY MEANIE FATTIES!!!!

Notice #207 - commenter didn’t bother addressing your point.  Her utter failure to provide any evidence whatsoever means that YOU are wrong, stupid, mean and making it all about you.  Bigots all eventually look the fucking same.

NEVER ONCE has anyone said people should not try to eat better, exercise, get healthier, etc.  It was simply pointed out - WITH EVIDENCE - that being healthier does not equal a lower number on the scale.  That’s what Healthy At Any Size is.

But, nope -  EVERYBODY knows only THIN is healthy!  It’s on the news, so it must be true!

The website, letsmove.gov, is not exactly what I would call fat-shaming.

And the entire movement has, thus far, been framed in the lenses of “the Obama kids are fat and are going on a diet”.

There is mention of the program’s goal to decrease childhood obesity, but the tone is not cruel or condescending.

So we should give them a (low-fat!) cookie? My greater point in all this is that we are spending money and time to do something of marginal help (educate kids) as opposed to something actually helpful (make fruits and vegetables available to the population at a fraction of the current cost).

It’s abstinence-only education, but with food this time. Why can’t liberals advocate for free vegetables with the same fervor as free condoms?

I totally agree that people should know more than their doctors about how their own bodies work, because that way we won’t need doctors any more!

Well, MY doctor thinks that abortions will make you infertile and that menopause happens at 29…

Once again, I fail to understand why this whole shebang has to be framed as “anti-obesity” when it could be just as easily framed as “pro-health”.

“Pro-health” is going to involve taking measurements.  This opens people up to shame, shame that we should control through education and other measures, but doesn’t mean we should stop measuring.  An “anti-STD” campaign doesn’t mean that people with STDs are bad people who should be shamed.  The opposite, in fact.  But that having an STD provokes shame in some people doesn’t mean we should simply not measure them when evaluating sexual health measures.

  By the way, your loved one is already fully aware that they are fat - you really aren’t the first person to make that realization.
Comment #205: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 04:08 PM

But wait , wasn’t it you up above pointing out that a healthy weight had a totally subjective standard? I’ve lived with a lifetime of elders who would say in this instance - “yeah, that’s what happens when you get old,”  or “exercise, the I wouldn’t have the energy to do x job.”  By this time Essie, it’s too fucking late for the gym and the treadmill the stress on the joints and heart could kill them.  Isn’t it better when the clothes first start getting tight to (as tactfully and mutually as possible) start changing habits? 

Shah8’s and Ben D. are right - you’ve taken what could have been an interesting thread and made it all about you again.

from waaay back upthread somewhere…

@18-

... while our genes might not be changing, the concept of epigenetics tells us that the expression of our genes might be, and that’s not something that you can undo in your lifetime.

@30-

...Epigenomics is a very new field, and it involves some limited acceptance of Lamarkian concepts.  The concept here is *limited* and there is a lot going on here, especially in the sense that many of its measurable effects have a great deal to do with environment and population. That being said, I have very strong doubts that anything to do with epigenetics have more to do with the scenario decribed in comment 18 than many other conceivable widespread stressors.  This sort of effect is extremely subtle and affects things on the *edge* of possibility and not within the wideban.

We almost got into a real conversation about this topic there for a minute, but got steered away amidst discussion of fat-shaming.  I hope it’s not too much of a derail to try and resurrect it.

I have a feeling that the effects of epigenitic influences from environmental pollutants may yet prove to be a significant factor.  Endocrine disruptors are widespread pollutants, and are known to cause many of these chronic health problems, including, amongst other things, persistent weight gain.  Even at low levels, consistent with those found in members of the general population, laboratory animals have been shown to have noticable effects, especially with regard to weight gain and early onset of puberty.  These chemicals have been in widespread use since the 1950s, and are persistent pollutants in the environment.  Even though more noticeably harmful types like DDT and PCBs have been phased out in much of the world, some forms are still widely used.  The latest flap, over the use of BPA in plastics, is telling.  Even in the face of definite research, the FDA buckled to industry pressure and failed to ban their use in “foodsafe” plastics and as lining in aluminum cans.  BPA, PBDE, Phthalates… they are all widely dispersed industrial pollutants, and are known to effect epigenetic outcomes, even at low doses.

As far as these new initiatives go, I would hope that maybe the heightened awareness of obesity rates will allow more attention to be focused on finding causes of the problems (including not only the possibly of the toxicological issues I mentioned, but also our oft-discussed systemic food production practices), not just assigning blame to people who are overweight.  What I would be interested to see is whether new research on this topic will allow for better regulation of industry, given the increasing attention being paid to long-term health outcomes.  I’m not holding my breath, though.

So you agree that going on and on about thermodynamics is pointless, since a body, faced with restricted calories, will make it physically impossible for you to burn more calories.

More or less.  But if you just dismiss these people, or tell them “thermodynamics doesn’t work” or “doesn’t apply”, they will come off with the impression that you’re just an anti-science nutter.  Even if they’re wrong, they would be fully justified in believing that, given the interaction.  There are far too many people that will dismiss science if it is inconvenient, or will lie to themselves about it.  The “calorie in vs calorie out people” have a mechanism that is explanatory and *true*.  If you don’t add to the explanatory power, there is no reason for them to look at anything beyond this model.

Actually, Essie, if you bothered to read the website (or even just an article about it) you would know that part of the program deals with eliminating food desserts and making healthy foods available in poor communities.  Other parts of the program deal with equipping schools with the tools and equipment to serve fresh and healthy meals.

By the way, I don’t consider educating kids on good health and nutrition to be of only “marginal help.”  I certainly wasn’t taught about nutrition and as a result had to struggle to learn it as an adult with poor habits.  I think nutrition—like sex ed.—is extremely important and that we do a great disservice to young people by neglecting to teach them about their bodies.

@ GGR #136

If your granny ate a pound of bacon every day - that bacon was likely from a hog that was fed a lot better and had more exercise, fresh air and no antibiotics.  The bacon may well have been cured the old fashioned way, too and no nitrites. There’s a HUGE difference in foods that carry the same name as in the past.

“Pro-health” is going to involve taking measurements.  This opens people up to shame

Not to be glib, but what do you think “weight” and BMI are? Measurements.

How about we take some measurements that actually tell us stuff (is child getting enough nutrients?) instead of measurements that tell us nothing (is child fat?)?

Or, we could go the “free veggies” route and rely on measurements of the marketplace instead of measurements of children’s bodies, if you’re that concerned (and I am!) about shaming.

Gypsy Lee:  Right there with you.  And when we point out other better measures of health they are either ignored, or… ok, well, ignored. 

May I just state for the record one last time:  You cannot tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them.  And weight is actually a really shitty indicator of health. 

Resting heart rate, active heart rate, fitness levels (although here I will say fuck the Presidential Fitness test), how much you can lift, far you can run… etc… are all FAR better indicators than weight.  And less humiliating.  Taking your resting heart rate is really easy, too.  We learned how to do it in PE in elementary school. 

On a side rant:
And as for helpful diet tips, after a horrendous butt surgery a couple of years ago (that was completely not weight-related, but because of an old injury I sustained in a rape, before you even get started), I was eating next to nothing and on prescribed laxatives so as not to strain the stitches.  Fruit juice was one of the few things I ingested that imparted calories or nutrients, and people actually told me, “Don’t drink too much fruit juice, you’ll gain weight.”  Even though fruit juice was pretty much my only source of calories at that point. 

Or my other favorite, when people tell me I shouldn’t eat fast food or drink soda.  :|

I don’t do either.  So, how is quitting something I don’t do going to help me lose weight? 

But of course, ALL fat people eat fast food and have IV drips of soda directly into their veins, so I must be lying. 

Seriously, guys, every fat person everywhere has heard all of this bullshit before.  We’ve done the diets, exercise regimens, special foods, ate only veggies, ate only meat and cheese (why hello thar Dr. Atkins), and we’re still fat.  If fat-shaming actually worked, we’d all be super models by now.

There’s a HUGE difference in foods that carry the same name as in the past.

My, god, it’s almost as if it ISN’T just as simple as “calories in, calories out”.

But, no, no, that way lies fad diets and madness.

Essie, you’re leaning on a lot of standard denialist tactics.  It’s really a bad idea, since fat activists have legitimate points that you could stick by.  But you’re up against science when you demand that we believe there’s no connection between obesity and certain health outcomes.  Anecdotal evidence is important for the person you’re describing—-individuals should be treated as such—-but public health initiatives are about more than you.

To illustrate the fallacy that is, “Some people are fat and in good health, therefore we shouldn’t measure this or consider it a public health concern”, here’s some other examples:

Some people seem genetically predisposed not to get HIV when exposed and/or seem to live forever with the virus without seroconverting.  Therefore we shouldn’t measure transmission rates of HIV.

Some people smoke forever and never suffer a moment’s worry, until they die when they’re hit by a train at 97.  So we shouldn’t measure smoking as a leading indicator on strokes, emphysema, or cancer.

Some people sit out in the sun all day every day and never get skin cancer.  Therefore we shouldn’t tell people to use sunscreen. 

The heart attacks, diabetes, and other problems that come from bad exercise and poor nutrition at an early age onward aren’t measureable until much later in life when it’s too late.  But we can measure weight gain across populations, which is strongly related. 

Now, I get that you don’t accept the evidence.  But that’s really just denialism.  If you sincerely think you have better measures that should replace the current ones, please!  Go into public health as a career and try those ideas out.

Noting many kids consume up to half of their daily calories at school, the White House also said it is seeking an additional $10 billion over 10 years to improve school meals.

Another part of the initiative would invest $400 million a year into Healthy Food Financing, a public-private plan that would bring grocery stores to underserved areas and get healthier foods into convenience stores.

Quotes are taken from the article linked in the post.

While the anti-obesity rhetoric certainly leaves plenty to be desired; It seems to me that these two initiatives, at least, are worthwhile.

Question to the Pandagonians: Does the (admittedly problematic) framing of this program as an “anti-obesity” campaign outweigh the possible benefits of enacting the two ideas (vaguely) outlined above?

By the way, I don’t consider educating kids on good health and nutrition to be of only “marginal help.”

I do, because I believe that poverty is going to have a much bigger effect on what you eat than anything else. If you educate kids to eat well, but don’t give them the tools to do so, you are not helping.

Geek, it’s true also that some smokers are healthier than non-smokers.  But public health officials aren’t being told they can’t use smoking rates as a leading indicator of overall trends.

The “calorie in vs calorie out people” have a mechanism that is explanatory and *true*.<blockquote>

*For “false” vales of “true”.

<blockquote>If you don’t add to the explanatory power, there is no reason for them to look at anything beyond this model.

Essie’s provided a smorgasbord of studies and evidence that everyone’s pretty much studiously ignored/misinterpreted so they can keep on with common sense fat hating.

But you’re up against science

Well, Amanda, not to be shrill, or anything, but I’ve posted several studies. You haven’t disagreed with them (that’s your right) and you haven’t posted counter-studies (also your right).

I’m a big fan of science, and I’ll look at anything you feel you want to dierct me to, and I’ll keep an open mind. But you haven’t posted anything - you’ve just asserted that I’m “up against science”. But from where I’m sitting, MY science backs me up.

Which is why I said, ages ago:

Now you’ve got your own research and conventional wisdom that weight CAN be meaningfully altered by X, Y, Z choices / factors / etc. And that’s an ongoing argument that I can’t win with you or anyone else.

What I CAN agree with you is fitness programs for kids. But don’t tie it to weight because (a) I think weight won’t change and (b) it won’t make the fitness program less worthwhile if the weight doesn’t change. Measure heart rate, or something else - you’re acting like weight is the only thing we can measure, and it’s not.

Do you disagree with that?

Essie, the program also incentivises grocery stores to open in food deserts, bodegas to sell fresh fruit and veggies, and gives money to schools to offer more nutritional food.

Thank you, jamie d. I think part of the problem here is that obesity and weight control really are more complicated than some people acknowledge, and people who are overweight or obese become frustrated with more of the same (just eat less! exercise more! etc), as if they just didn’t know that and now everything will be different. (I think that results in an extreme reaction that also is problematic, but that’s another topic.) There is more going on with these issues, and I believe epigenetics and environmental pollutants are a part of that, along with the chemical concoctions marketed as food that most people eat and lord knows what else. Along with, of course, the basics like lack of exercise, increasing stress, etc.

This really is a complex problem that researchers don’t fully understand. Just ten years ago the answer to everything was low fat, remember - how’d that work out? To pretend it’s all as simple as eating more vegetables is not accurate and counterproductive because it just frustrates people who have been there, done that, and still have the pounds.

I’m sort of confused how you can be a big fan of science and refer to the first law of thermodynamics as a “theory” and treat as a nefarious conspiracy, but, you know, minor point.

Resting heart rate, active heart rate, fitness levels (although here I will say fuck the Presidential Fitness test), how much you can lift, far you can run… etc… are all FAR better indicators than weight.  And less humiliating.

You must not have gone to my junior high or high school.  There’s nothing more fun than having all of your gym classmates stand around watching you try to trudge around a track because you’re the very last one and having the teacher finally say, “Just get off the track and get inside.”  Oh, and having the gym teacher call your measurements out to her assistant as she takes them was tons of fun as well.  But since you would find it less humiliating than getting on a scale, I guess we need to go by what your comfort level is.

But from where I’m sitting, MY science backs me up.

Well, except for the parts where researchers tried to make people stick to the Atkins diet for 5 years and then declared that it proves that no one can eat a healthier diet and lose weight all at the same time.  Your science doesn’t seem to say what you think it says.

Phylosopher says, “Just make the time.” Yeah, that’s great for you and me, who probably only work one job, that ascribes to what my grandfather would call “white man’s hours.” I can make the time to cook, and usually do (or rather the husband does) AND go to the gym even.  But what about all those folks working more than one job, or trying to also improve their education so they can get a better job and maybe be able to work one more job?  Now add kids to (and I know Phylosopher mentioned his, but he also has a decent job) the mix of multiple jobs and/or school.
Comment #143: GeekGirlsRule on 02/09 at 02:34 PM

AU contraire, mam’selle? ma’dam?  Try job, business, livestock and homeschooling kids. We’ve had this argument before.  Are there some people who literally don’t have time (yes, I work with some of them daily students with families working fulltime and trying to go to school full time so they can receive financial aid) that’s why I think one place to start is institutional food service. 

But I’ve also worked public sector (low-income) and the current agribusiness has a cross section of customers and contacts.  I can tell you that across the board, people have become very narrow in their food choices and it is often because they don’t know.  THat don’t know is informational lack:  about how animals are raised - excellent film BTW is “Our Daily Bread,” about how to grow or preserve food, even if they have room, and about how to cook - x product is on sale, “but what do you do with it?” while the grannies and aunties begin planning a good inexpensive meal.  Teaching people to cook or to grow their own food is about empowerment - it is still up to them to use the knowledge or skill.

ANd yes, I’m really sorry this so offends you, but even upper middle class, plenty of free time people can be lazy and/or ignorant about food.  I watched my kids sports team at an outing last week.  There was a new item in the lobby - entertainment and sugar - looked it up - the size most of the parents bought for the kids was large - food coloring (some safety questions) citric acid - OK as far as I know thought the process might be questionable and @ 1/2 cup of sugar.  Now, I am pretty sure that no one there would willingly think giving their kid a 1/2 cup of sugar was a good idea, but they did - even though some kids had not eaten any dinner.  I also see this a lot during practices pop, fast food and candy abound.

I’ve seen coaches undermine good habits (sleep and food) and since I don’t talk about food to people who don’t ask, they don’t know my views.  When I sent out an interesting article on the two issues from a recent a sports association newsletter in a “hey, thought you might find this interesting - I’d overheard two moms talking about it) - I got back a nasty email, from the little hotshot’s parent talking about how his kid was going to score more than anyone else on Dr Pepper and Skittles. 

It is about choices, but at some point, we have to confront that we can’t do it all - eat healthy and keep a jampacked-in-the-car schedule - quite simply not very possible.  We are finite and we need to realize it.

Amanda,
Yes, but we’ve provided you other means of outcome assessment that ARE more indicative (whether you’re a good fatty or a bad fatty) of your health and fitness levels.  I say again, what the hell is wrong with those?  Why are they just being ignored?

I understand that the people framing this action are hopping on the Obesity bandwagon because it’s a buzzword that generates a lot sturm und drang, as this thread so magnificently demonstrates, but the fact remains that framing it this way is really not helpful.  And that there’s nothing wrong with framing it as a health issue as opposed to a perceived attrativeness issue, which is really what most concern trolling comes down to. 

Essie’s, my, Gypsy’s and others’ point is that we don’t disagree with the goals:  Better food, more activity.  But we think linking it to weight is stupid beyond stupid and ineffective.  That sort of thinking encourages eating disorders, and the Gods know those don’t need any more encouragement. 

Framing it as an anti-obesity measure is a cheap grab at a buzzword that’s just going to fuel the flames of fat shaming, regardless of whether the kid in question spends all day scarfing chips in front of an Xbox or runs around like a wild thing all day and is incredibly fit and active, but weighs the same.

GGR - that was why the “if all else is equal”  I get distance and $. But really some gyms cater to certain crowds - the local Gators is a twenty-something meat market.  ICK.

I’m sort of confused how you can be a big fan of science and refer to the first law of thermodynamics as a “theory” and treat as a nefarious conspiracy, but, you know, minor point.

Well, because I didn’t. I said “thermodynamics theory” in the context of weight loss.

Thermodynamics also isn’t a reason why evolution is impossible, much as the creationists would like it to be. That doesn’t meant that thermodynamics is wrong, it means that in both cases it’s being applied improperly.

But public health officials aren’t being told they can’t use smoking rates as a leading indicator of overall trends.

Maybe because smoking is a choice and being fat isn’t?

I’m sort of confused how you can be a big fan of science and refer to the first law of thermodynamics as a “theory” and treat as a nefarious conspiracy, but, you know, minor point.

Oh good god, that’s not what anybody said. All she (and others) pointed out was that simple thermodynamics does not apply to weight loss the way anti-fat people on here claim it does.

Yes, but we’ve provided you other means of outcome assessment that ARE more indicative (whether you’re a good fatty or a bad fatty) of your health and fitness levels.  I say again, what the hell is wrong with those?  Why are they just being ignored?

I understand that the people framing this action are hopping on the Obesity bandwagon because it’s a buzzword that generates a lot sturm und drang, as this thread so magnificently demonstrates, but the fact remains that framing it this way is really not helpful.  And that there’s nothing wrong with framing it as a health issue as opposed to a perceived attrativeness issue, which is really what most concern trolling comes down to. 

Essie’s, my, Gypsy’s and others’ point is that we don’t disagree with the goals:  Better food, more activity.  But we think linking it to weight is stupid beyond stupid and ineffective.  That sort of thinking encourages eating disorders, and the Gods know those don’t need any more encouragement. 

Framing it as an anti-obesity measure is a cheap grab at a buzzword that’s just going to fuel the flames of fat shaming, regardless of whether the kid in question spends all day scarfing chips in front of an Xbox or runs around like a wild thing all day and is incredibly fit and active, but weighs the same.

I believe Amanda’s answer was that fitness measurements would cause shaming. But that doesn’t explain why weight measurements are a-ok.

I haven’t read the whole thread, so forgive if someone has already said this, but I think the best possible advice for healthy living is to get plenty of exercise, eat more fruits and vegetables, and stay the fuck off the scale!  Judge progress by how good you feel, rather than how much you weigh. 

Just my two cents.

Well, except for the parts where researchers tried to make people stick to the Atkins diet for 5 years and then declared that it proves that no one can eat a healthier diet and lose weight all at the same time.  Your science doesn’t seem to say what you think it says.

Yes, you hate Atkins. Congrats. Did you miss the part where the point of the study was to prove that <u>weight gain in the second year of a diet didn’t mean that the dieters had gotten lazy and upped their calorie intake</u>?

The study was in response to the “people gain the weight back because they stopped dieting” cannard. I’m sorry I don’t have one study that proves everything you ever wanted to know about fat and dieting - that’s why I linked to several.

Also, may I introduce your condescending ass to the concept of green houses? The local, organic farmers that I have a co-op with use them and would LOVE to have goverment subsidies to ramp up production.
Comment #159: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 02:47 PM

Essie greenhouse production in and of itself can be environmentally unsustainable - organic or not.  Double wall high hoop is a possibility and I work with a program that tries to do so.  Now, getting that production ramped up is not going to be easy or fast getting supermarkets to even begin stocking is a really tough sell - they want uniformity of size and supply, not healthy - as do customers - which should be the driving force.  So this is a three prong effort and education seems to be the place to start is we want to include choice, not coercion.

But that’s where I try to educate about food choices - one doesn’t need to eat tomatoes/red peppers/broccoli in February to eat healthy.  Most kids love squash, it’s sweet and nutritious, but it intimidates the heck out of the cook if they’ve never made it before.

It has to be local, too. oterwise we’re just setting ourselves up for disaster if oil prices rise.

You’ve given me long term outcomes that often come after it’s too late.  I’m asking for measurements that could be tracked prior to the worst outcomes already underway.  Once the diabetes has begun, you’re not rolling back, you know? 

And that’s the problem—-the assumption of malice on the part of public health officials, who really do know what they’re talking about when it comes to the link between obesity and poor health outcomes.  Is it the only one they consider?  No, and to say otherwise is a lie.

Captain Bathrobe, the issue is that certain people think that dieticians are nazis.

Phylosopher, if you look at one of my earlier comments I did allow how while some poor people don’t know about nutrition, some do, and the same for well-off people.  But that there ARE food deserts out there where it is more difficult to get good, non-chemical laden foods. 

I’m lucky enough to live in Seattle, in an area where you can’t swing a dead rat on a string without hitting an organic grocery or co-op, but for many areas even here, that isn’t so.  Although I’ve noticed that we are getting more fruit stand type places opening up in the more disadvantaged neighborhoods, which is good, and undercutting the grocery stores, which is better. 

As for gyms, when I was younger the only gym the company my Dad worked for would subsidize family memberships for was a meat market, and my lithe, eating-disordered, 18 year old ass was a big hit there.  Men who hit on me while wearing wedding rings still creep me out. 

When I had my own money, I went to a Living Well Lady which was a women’s only gym with all the toys regular gyms have.  I loved it.  Alas, the chain went under in the mid-90s.  And you couldn’t pay me to go to Curves.  A. They don’t have what I’m looking for and B. The owner of the umbrella corporation (yes, I realize they’re franchises) is an anti-choice douche.  Nope, not giving them my money.

I am happy at the University gym most of the time.

And better food is great, but again, you haven’t said how you’d measure the immediate outcomes of that.  Twenty or thirty years is too long to wait to see if farmer’s markets in low income communities is having the desired health effects.

Better food, more gyms—-no one is against that.  It’s easy to focus on the judgy people, who are a pain in the ass, for sure.  But public health programs like this one aren’t about wagging fingers, but doing what you say you want—-more exercise, better food.

But if we don’t measure the program’s effectiveness, then we can’t know if there’s glaring flaws.  Rinse, repeat.

the assumption of malice on the part of public health officials, who really do know what they’re talking about when it comes to the link between obesity and poor health outcomes.

Yes. Public health officials should always be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to health issues because they really DO know what they’re talking about when it comes to the link between HPV vaccines and higher teenage sex rates.

Am I still on Pandagon?

Why yes, you are.

And better food is great, but again, you haven’t said how you’d measure the immediate outcomes of that.  Twenty or thirty years is too long to wait to see if farmer’s markets in low income communities is having the desired health effects.

But you’re expecting the Obama anti-obesity push to produce lower childhood obseity rates in a shorter time period than that? By teaching kids a food pyramid and giving them bottled water in soda machines?

What are you talking about, Essie?  Public health officials are the ones who promote the HPV vaccine to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.  You’re in full-blown denialist mode.

Thanks, shah8, just checking.

I don’t suppose anyone bothered to read the health care horror stories I linked to earlier. Oh well.

Public health officials are the ones who promote the HPV vaccine to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer.

Except to teenagers because it will, you know, increase promiscuity.

Amanda,

Improvement of resting heart rate comes about rather quickly actually, as far as I know.  As does being able to walk or run farther or lift more.  (Caveat, I am not advocating weight lifting for children or teens, as it can seriously damage their growth plates and cause major problems later on).  Shit, teach them how to take each their own blood pressure for a science class or something. (I remember when my grandfather had a heart attack, my sister and I used to fight over who got to take his blood pressure every day, and then we took everyone else’s blood pressure…)  That’s pretty immediate.  Both resting heart rate and blood pressure as as immediate as weight loss. 

I say it again, weight is a sucky indicator of health, particularly for children.  Are they active?  There’s something you can measure right now by observing. 

I also don’t advocate body fat measuring for children, because children should have more body fat than an adult to be healthy, they need it for growth and development.

I think there are a couple arguments here that are really about semantics:

I do not think that anyone here would have a real problem with calling this a get healthy program. If you think that most people wouldn’t immediately associate this with weight though, you must not talk to people much. So, the ‘framing’ here isn’t that important as long as the goal here is to get children to be healthier and it seems that is the case.

‘Overweight’ has a particular meaning in BMI circles and most people would not agree with that if they saw people who were ‘overweight’ by this definition. The fact that ‘overweight’ people tend to live longer says there’s a problem with the definition. On the other hand, pretty much all studies show that people who are ‘obese’ (which also doesn’t really go with perception) do worse and ‘morbidly obese’ people do much worse. It’s really these last two categories that are the problem and the percent of people who are in these two categories is rising quite quickly (although it seems to have leveled off in the past 5-10 years).

BMI in not a perfect measure but for most people is ok. If you go to most respectable places, they will say that if your BMI is more than some limit then you should look at a secondary measure to see if you need to lose weight. Notice that pretty much any measure will not work for all people (there are people who have really low resting pulse rates that are in terrible shape, people who can run far can have health problems, ...).

The real question here is: do you think the program is good or not? If the only problem is the wording, then that can be worked around.

As an aside, the first First Lady to really try to work on a wide range of real issues was Eleanor Roosevelt and she was reviled for it for the rest of her life (on the other hand, progressives and civil rights activists ended up liking her better than FDR). One would have thought that this type of thing was gone, but the reaction to Hillary shows it doesn’t seem to have.

So the whole thing about the Laws of Thermodynamics and calories in food and body weight is a little more complicated than weight=calories consumed.  Small changes in metabolism can easily have a much greater effect than just changing the overall calories consumed. ...

...
Comment #164: MikeEss on 02/09 at 02:54 PM

But, although there are a few more variables, they can be calculated - and this is what every kid in a 4-H livestock program learns to do- calculate rate of gain based on various feed programs.  Yes, cattle have different genetics - that’s what breed/bloodline is all about, and some are more skittish - tense (corticol) and more more, but every kid will tell you that increasing the kcal leads to an increase in weight gain all else being equal.  Stop putting the kcal in and the ROG drops relative to that animal.

Essie, you’re deliberately misunderstanding to protect your prejudices.  The point is that interventions are less effective if they’re aimed at measuring outcomes after the bad shit happens.  So, if you want cervical cancer rates to go down, you look at preventing the transmission of HPV.  If you want lung cancer rates to go down, you measure smoking rates and try to lower those.  If you want infertility rates to go down, you target the transmission of STIs.  If you want the AIDS rate to go down, you make sure people don’t get it.  If you want diabetes and heart disease to go down, you aim your interventions at prevention, lowering obesity rates. 

I know you get this.  You’re just not wanting to get it.

Engu Cledge:

*For “false” vales of “true”.

Now, see, this really does make you look like a crazy nutbar.  It really is true that fat gain and loss is pretty much directly causally determined by calories in minus calories burned.

It’s just that our bodies directly adjusts calories burned and indirectly adjusts (via exercise and hunger urges) both calories in and calories burned,  This is adding additional biological processes to the model, increasing our understanding, rather than throwing out part that we know is true (and even labelling it false) because it isn’t usefully predictive by itself except for very short terms.  It’s useless to poke one part of this, if others are adjusted by a feedback loop.

What is needed is more science, not less.  What are the precise details of these feedback systems?  Are these set points purely genetic, or environmental?  Are they fixed, or can they be altered.  If so, how?  There is some endocrinological evidence that fructose and alcohol consumption can both increase this set point.

Essie’s provided a smorgasbord of studies and evidence that everyone’s pretty much studiously ignored/misinterpreted so they can keep on with common sense fat hating.

None of the studies Essie has provided conflict in any way with this model.

That’s a good point, Geek, and we should add that—-and already do—-into the public health measurements.  The more, the merrier!  More data, not less.

But it’s not going to replace measuring obesity.

This could be the culprit, and I believe there are some other citrus diseases in Florida that make their oranges fit for juicing but not eating…

...and it’s spreading to California…
Comment #168: MikeEss on 02/09 at 03:07 PM
Could be, but I was also near one of the largest migrant worker tomato growing areas, ditto - everything in the damn chain grocery store was imported.

Which is to say, that it can be taken in conjunction.  More data=better understanding.  Eliminating entire swaths of useful data that’s been routinely demonstrated on a broad scale (I don’t accept “grandpa smoked until he was 95” arguments) because there is legitimate concerns about fatphobia is a really bad idea.  Phobias are not dealt with by expanding ignorance and shutting down conversations.

No, Amanda, I’m not “deliberately misunderstanding”. I disagree with you - there’s a difference.

My point with the HPV is that I find it amazing that when “public health officials” oppose something you approve of, you rightly call them out on their bad science, but when people provide science against something you disagree with, you pull an argument from authority out of your ass.

You said I was “against science”, but you can’t provide a single study to back up your assertions. The best thing you can pull out is an argument from authority (public health officials know their shit) and a deliberate misunderstanding about something I posted about thermodyamics.

That’s you usual M.O. - I’m used to it. Assert, and then pretend that the other person is crazy because of a deliberate misunderstanding. That’s fine - it’s your blog, and it’s your party. But, no, I’m not arguing in bad faith. Sorry if you feel that I am.

Essie, you’re deliberately misunderstanding to protect your prejudices.

Also: which prejudices are that?

Yes, but they are dealt with by decrying harmful, stupid stereotypes and demanding that people treat us like human beings regardless of what we look like.

I don’t accept “grandpa smoked until he was 95” arguments

Do you accept reams of medical evidence that BMI “overweight” people have the highest life expectancies?

Essie, do you accept that people who are ‘morbidly obese’ have the lowest?

@ Older, #186 - so this anecdote means that you have a disease illness that takes you out of the normal parameters of weight gain/loss - so you would be excluded from a study of the general population - And that affects talk about studying marker for average/normal people how?

You know…

I actually have read your health care horror stories you linked to.  I actually go and check and see whether someone is speaking in bad faith BEFORE I accuse them of speaking in bad faith.  I know I’m an elitist, but I care about whether something is right or not, to the best of my ability to measure.  I care even more when it’s about real suffering.  So I have a basic familiarity with the concept of obesity and diabetes because that’s an essential element of keeping myself in good health as long as I can.  Flowing from that, I can actually evaluate your claims and links, and reasonably judge that you’re talking shit and clambering around, using the Chewbacca Defense, projecting whatever your own insecurities about your weight and shouting over everyone because nobody better be talking shit about YOU.

I mean, this is just basic and elemental public science.  It’s vastly easier than climate change to understand.  Just as it is with climate change, it’s not about your individual perceptions, and it’s certainly not just about the natural oscillations of climate.  Just as it is with climate change, but under a whole lot less statistical baggage (because the issue is idiot simple), there is pretty much rock solid evidence for the fact that body weight flunctuate according to what you eat, on average.  Now someone can pig out at Thanksgiving or fast during Ramadan and gain or lose weight counterintuitively, but that doesn’t mean that body weight/composition doesn’t change according to consumption in terms of quality and quantity on average over the full range of body types over the long term.  Add in exercise with a good mix of activities, and most people will enjoy the results of eating better and getting more exercise, and from a public health perspective, they can most easily see this via whether weight gain stop growing or diminish.  From the perspective of your doctor, then yes, that doctor needs to be using the full range of measurements, but that’s not what the topic is about.

And then we’ll still see all the silly people waving around idiotic and irrelevant papers claiming that their science is right and everyone else’s science is wrong…Them’s the breaks, and hopefully no one will listen to them.

Essie, on HPV, you are completely backwards.  You’re either so poorly informed on the issues as to be shocking, or you’re arguing in bad faith.  The FDA, CDC, and all world health organizations that you condemn on obesity have promoted the HPV vaccine.  You seem to be under the impression the CDC is against the HPV vaccine.  On the contrary:

Two vaccines (Cervarix and Gardasil) are available to protect females against the types of HPV that cause most cervical cancers. One of these vaccines (Gardasil) also protects against most genital warts. Both vaccines are recommended for 11 and 12 year-old girls, and for females 13 through 26 years old, who did not get any or all of the three recommended doses when they were younger. These vaccines can also be given to girls beginning at age 9. It is recommended that females get the same vaccine brand for all three doses, whenever possible.

As you can see, your assertion that public health officials oppose the vaccine is 100% wrong.  It couldn’t be more wrong.  The public health officials in question are fighting an ignorant, prejudiced public who, for their own reasons, doesn’t want to believe the public health officials.  You have it completely backwards.

Phylosopher, that’s unfair. The entire American food system is geared toward making people fat. And being “not lazy” about food is a privilege. You have to have access to supermarkets, time to cook, a real kitchen, energy after your workday . . . When every boxed and processed food is filled with HFCS, soy, corn, salt, and that’s all that’s available to a lot of lower class Americans, they’re not just being lazy about food.
Comment #10: Av0gadro on 02/09 at 11:18 AM

Uh no.  Sorry, no study these arent’ the kind of places with money for that, but I’m pointing out a general loss in ability to eat well cheaply.

Take neckbones - I have heard from abbatotoir after abbattoir and food pantries that this cut goes unused - people do not know what to do with it.

A real kitchen?  did you ever watch the honeymooners?  for years, that was a kitchen and people managed to cook in it.  One needs a heat source and a pot and a pan and a knife.  I have lived under various circumstances sans anything frm cusineart/kitchenaid and yet, cooked. 

Time - talk about wantign instant gratification - how long do you think it takes to put ingredients in a crock pot?

But I am glad that you admitted that you’re working from the assumption of malice.  I don’t share that assumption.  I think most government health agencies are staffed with people who care about sound science and the public health.  Exceptions to the rule came mostly from the higher ups in the Bush administration, not from the boring ass folks hired for their expertise putting together information that’s only controversial in non-scientific circles.

wnoise,

I’m not disagreeing that there is a lot more science to weight loss than thermodynamics and its relation to set points, environmental factors, feedback systems, etc. In fact, that was just my point.

My objection was the same as Essie’s: Thermodynamics does not equal eat less burn more does not equal thin, which is how it was being used here—as a cudgel, not a scientific system. Thermodynamics is pointless as a tool for weight loss when the amount of calories needed to lose weight goes beneath the amount of calories needed to be healthy or even stay alive. It may be “true”, but not in any practical sense that a person has control over.

As you can see, your assertion that public health officials oppose the vaccine is 100% wrong.  It couldn’t be more wrong.

They aren’t now. There were some public health officials that DID oppose it, though, and we didn’t just roll over and say, “Oh, well, public health officials really do know what they are talking about.” Which is what you are saying now, about childhood obesity.

And no, before you start in, I am NOT anti-vaccination. I am anti-“argument from authority” that you pulled with you got called on your ‘you’re against science’ attack. If you’ve got science that backs you up on this issue, put it up and I’ll read it. I might even change my mind in my belief in weight set points and genetics determining weight, not choices.

But if you can’t or won’t provide any scientific studies that undermine my belief in genetics being the strongest weight determining factor, then don’t post that I’m anti-science, because you just look foolish for saying I won’t listen to the reams of science you claim to have but refuse to share.

Some people sit out in the sun all day every day and never get skin cancer.  Therefore we shouldn’t tell people to use sunscreen.

Actually, studies are starting to show that we need at least some of the UVB rays that are blocked by sunscreen. When we block the UVBs we stunt vitamin D production and vitamin D is starting to show up as more and more important in preventing common cancers, it has especially been indicated as preventing breast cancer. In addition skin cancer is very rarely deadly, but the cancers vitamin D may help prevent are. I don’t think we should be out baking in the sun for hours til we look like John Boehner, but direct sun exposure for 15 minutes a few times a week may actually be very beneficial.

Which is why I don’t think measuring obesity rates is necessarily going to tell us much about long term health outcomes for people who are children right now. Science could go on to show that rising type II diabetes and other diseases are rising independent of obesity rates, and that the correlation has been coincidental.

I know it’s anecdote, but my father weighs maybe 120# soaking wet and developed type II diabetes. I’m almost positive his diet caused it (coca-cola and coffee cake for breakfast every day) but if we were only looking at outer appearance you would never have guessed. It actually took years of his being run down and sick and exhausted before he was finally diagnosed, because looking at him based on the idea that thin=healthy he slipped under the radar.

I think all the initiatives included in Michelle Obama’s plan are great. but I think weight is a piss poor measure of health. I think the ideas expressed above re: measuring “Resting heart rate, active heart rate, fitness levels (although here I will say fuck the Presidential Fitness test), how much you can lift, far you can run… etc” are much better ideas.

When I was younger and barely sleeping, and drinking most nights, and smoking a fuck-ton of pot, and taking whatever other drugs popped up for my consumption, and eating only Taco Bell, little debbie snack cakes, chips, and mountain dew I was the thinnest I’ve ever been. In hindsight I was probably malnourished and slowly killing myself, but I was thin, conventionally attractive, and my self-esteem was through the roof.

There are days where I entertain living like that again so I can be thin and pretty. That’s fucked up and why I think obesity as a measure is a terrible idea. The only times I’ve been thin is when I had disordered eating and/or lived exclusively on chemicals and drugs. Now I sleep right, eat right, and with the exception of still trying to quit smoking, do everything I’m supposed to and I’m fat.

Healthy At Any Size, yes! Obesity epidemic ZOMG, no.

My, god, it’s almost as if it ISN’T just as simple as “calories in, calories out”.

But, no, no, that way lies fad diets and madness.
Comment #225: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 04:31 PM

Bullshit Essie - I was talking about her longevity, not her weight.  You will twist anything - even an unrelated observation to fulfill your hypothesis.  Hey, that Elephant moniker - = GOP?

I am glad that you admitted that you’re working from the assumption of malice.

No such thing. I am working from the assumption that there are a LOT of beliefs out there about weight and that “public health officials” are not some monolithic group-think block that (a) all agree about the causes of childhood obesity and (b) should be followed blindly without looking at the science because, oh, they’re the OFFICIALS after all.

Hey, that Elephant moniker - = GOP?

How many GOPs do you know who advocate for free fruit and veggies for the poor? And free condoms to boot?

The “elephant” is either because it rhymes with ‘e’ and I like alliteration or because I have an electrical engineering degree and I like the ‘ee’ angle or because I’m fat. Or all three.

I do, because I believe that poverty is going to have a much bigger effect on what you eat than anything else. If you educate kids to eat well, but don’t give them the tools to do so, you are not helping.
Comment #228: Essie Elephant on 02/09 at 04:32 PM

so why are you against a program that does both or that dovetails with another program that does? 
I really despise your defeatism, your willingness to use the perfect as the enemy of the good, all in defense of you pet cause which just happens to also benefit your personal victimhood.

Oh, and for the love of all that’s righteous, stop talking about thermodynamics!  Only people who has actually seen a thermo equation or two, or at least familiar with the Carnot Cycle are permitted to use that holy name!

*sigh* anyways, the original bastard point was pretty simple, that unless you have severe digestive issues (or many other illnesses), it really freakin’ is:

calories consumed is calories stored or used.

If you really want to contest that, keep in mind that you’re pretty much saying that mass just kind of disappears or appears in your tummy because of…UNDERPANTS GNOMES!!  This goes under conservation of mass, eh?

Now, perhaps you’re more anxious when you’re eating alot and then burning it off in nervous energy and jitters.  Or maybe you shifted from eating certain food to others that your body digests better and you gain wait despite lowing the total.  But the idea is still the same, which is that you’re on an energy budget, what you eat is either passed out, stored, or used.  It’s feasible that you won’t lose weight even when you follow diet and exercise.  Plenty of people don’t.  Plenty of people DO, as well.  There are many reasons why for both cases, even when the general rule holds.  More than that, the process will make you more healthy regardless of whether you actually lose weight.

For Fuck’s Sake, Phylosopher, neither Essie nor myself is advocating scrapping the plan.  We’re advocating changing the framing so as not to fan the flames of fat-shaming and cause yet more eating disorders among our young men and women.

Essie is not, and I’m dubious that you are.

Essie,

530 calories is not the same as 800-1200.  I also never said that people should lose weight because not doing so is unhealthy.  I don’t know if I believe in that.  But, we are heavier, and we are eating more and moving less.  For those of us (myself included) who don’t want to be heavier, because of how it makes me feel, and how it makes it harder for me to be in shape, moving more and eating less is a good solution.  Anyone who is interested in elaboration on this theme should check out Lyle McDonald. 

Anyone who doesn’t care to lose weight, that’s fine too.  But for those of us who do care, I’m not going to shut up because you don’t want to hear it.

You can kill yourself by eating too little and exercising too much.  We all know that.  You can kill yourself by swimming too much or drinking too much or eating too much of the wrong thing.  But 800 to 1200, even with exercise, isn’t too little for most people.  If someone isn’t able to monitor their own health/energy levels, they probably shouldn’t do *anything* without strict medical supervision.  That’s not a slam, people are different, that’s just realizing where ones limitations lie.  And I know what I’m talking about because I have eaten between 1200-1500 calories for months at a time, and worked out some.  My health was great.

And yes, I also recognize that there is some newer science coming out stating that the types of calories do matter.  That’s the reason I said thermodynamics *is the floor.*  One of the first things I said on this thread is that high fat low carb works for me.  I feel better, I have more energy, my hands don’t shake from hypoglycemia.  It is possible that people are different, though, so I wouldn’t demand that someone who wanted to lose weight had to do it in the manner that worked for me.

The reason I don’t buy the one study you’ve cited as being probative is (1) the people still net lost weight, (2) the gain towards the end could have had to do with poor counting, or less exercise, which I’ve acknowledged is easy to do because your body does try to adjust and (3) the study does not contain a control group of people who didn’t diet.  If it did, then we would be able to compare the health and weight outcomes for both groups, and start getting ideas about whether dieting/not dieting was healthier.

phylosopher,

Yeah, right now, the omega 6/omega 3 balance, cutting out refined carbs and perhaps all grains is probably looking the best.  But I didn’t want to really get into the complexities here.  Plus, with correlation not equalling causation, you gotta worry sometimes that the inflammation omega 6 omega 3 hypothesis may end up being bunk.

First a little history as I see it.  Up until the end of WWII, there was a lot of scarcity in the country.  You couldn’t just pop down the block to the neighborhood market anytime you liked and pick up anything you wanted any time of the year.  Especially during the Depression, most people just didn’t have any money; but even before then, there was a big divide between the rich and poor and not much of a middle class to speak of.  So most people were forced into lives of scarcity and obesity was less of an issue; even if there was a genetic predisposition, for most people it just wasn’t possible to eat enough to be overweight.  They couldn’t afford it and there wasn’t enough food around.

After WWII, scarcity was replaced with abundance.  Innovations in refrigeration and transportation made it possible to transport foodstuffs from anywhere to anywhere, any time; the Green Revolution made modern agriculture so productive that the carrying capacity of the Earth was raised far above where it had previously been thought, invalidating the overpopulation theories of Malthus and Ehrlich (or at least postponing them far down the road).  The United States, unscarred by the world wars and enjoying the fruits of victory, became the richest nation in the world; the New Deal that had ended the Depression also enabled the creation of the modern middle class.  Abundance of supply combined with increased purchasing power made it possible to buy and eat whatever one wanted anytime one wanted.  And so we did.

I think we’re still trying to figure out how to live in this world of abundance.  For all of human history, and millions of years prior, we lived in scarcity; and evolution had thousands of years to adjust to new circumstances.  We’ve had this abundance for about 60-70 years.  That’s simply too fast to expect us to adapt to it.  Despite the fat acceptance movement’s legitimate claims about shaming, the fact of the matter is that being fat is not our natural state.  I highly doubt that many fat people enjoy being fat.  (I certainly don’t!)  They may have become resigned to being fat and are making the best of their situation; that’s understandable and probably even wise.  But that doesn’t mean that as a society we should encourage acceptance of being fat as good; it isn’t.  We should accept fat people as people worthy of dignity and respect, but we should be very careful not to let that morph into acceptance of being fat.  I think the evidence is pretty clear that there are a lot of negatives to being overweight, and those translate into public health problems that everyone winds up paying for, not just the person involved.

So fat people losing weight is a worthy goal, both for personal and societal reasons.  There are however two problems I’ve seen mentioned here.  shah8 said:

Losing that wieght, under the guide of a proper dietician and physical therapist, will generally solve a huge number of your health problems and prevent more.  It’s the proverbial low-hanging fruit.

That’s great, except that being “under the guide of a proper dietician and physical therapist” costs money.  Who’s going to pay for my proper dietician and physical therapist?  Even for someone in the middle class, such professional help is a luxury that is often unaffordable.  One hour of personal training is about $50 today; if you need a trainer 3 times a week it’s as much as I spend on food for the week.  If we’re going to have a “war on obesity,” I think such things are going to have to be provided by all of society; and that means a government program, financed by everyone’s tax dollars.  Which opens the can of worms about “why should I pay for other people’s (bad) lifestyle” and all that yada yada that conservatives spout.

(cont)

(cont)
The other is this thermodynamics argument, which is very popular.  Ismone said:

If after you lose the weight you want to keep it off, you need to figure out how many calories per day you can eat and not gain weight.  Then eat that many.

The problem is, it’s too damn much work to keep track of all that.  To really do it, you need to keep a food diary with you and write down everything you eat all day, every day.  Then you have to figure out how many calories that is.  And everyone who wants to use this method has to do it.

I’ve tried doing that and it’s impossible.  I even bought a scale so I could weigh out everything; it’s just too much.  I’m not going to devote hours of my leisure time to tracking down the calorie count of everything I want to eat.  I have other things I want to do in my life besides keep track of what I’m eating.  And a lot of what I want to eat isn’t something you can easily figure out the calorie content of:  what’s the calorie content of a two-entree plate of mushroom chicken and orange chicken with noodles and an egg roll from Panda Express?  Until it becomes easy to do, you’re only going to get a relative handful of really committed people doing it; and is that really a workable basis for a broad-based public health initiative?

Phylosopher, if you look at one of my earlier comments I did allow how while some poor people don’t know about nutrition, some do, and the same for well-off people.  But that there ARE food deserts out there where it is more difficult to get good, non-chemical laden foods.

But, when one is poor, one is less likely to spend $$ on something if it may be rejected or if one doesn’t recognize it as a food. I remember one point in that low-income program where kiwi’s were just beginning to be imported (yeah, not very locavorish, but just go with the story - OK?)  None of our clients knew what they were, until we brought some in for a tasting - their kids loved them and the bright color - the drawback was the prickly outside and they didn’t know if you ate the peel or not… so education.  It doesn’t necessarily mean condescension - OK?

I could post a bunch of bullshit studies from oil corporation-funded front groups that “disprove” global warming if I wanted to.

Few people should be eating 800 calories.  That only works if you’re teeny and aren’t all that active.  You don’t even need to eat fewer calories.  Just freaking eat a normal diet with few items that are empty calories.  You can even eat MORE.  A real diet is about nutritious, filling foods, not about losing weight per se.  We conflate it because people who eat well can often be satisfied with fewer calories.  We also mix in these toxic notions of losing weight with special magic tools or hard core discipline.  No shit those kinds of war-with-yourself tactics don’t work for the majority of people.  It’s just you, your body and you aren’t seperate!

Hell I’m from the Tobacco Capital of the Universe. I was told, as late as circa 1999 and 2000 that smoking really didn’t cause cancer, that it was “pollutants” and bad genetics and power lines and cell phones, and hey, the Native Americans didn’t get cancer, and blah blah blah. It was bullshit.

In the end, even PM admitted it was tobacco all along. How much of the “fat acceptance” stuff is funded by Big Agro I wonder?

Phylosopher, unfortunately, there’s a lot of condescension in there (see Jamie Oliver’s new show.  I have no hopes for that sensationalist bullshit). 

The thing is, if it isn’t accessible, all the knowledge in the world doesn’t matter.  You taught them about Kiwis because they became available to your clients.  Awesome.  But when the local “grocery store” carries nothing but boxed or canned stuff and some frozen stuff, that does you no good. 

http://ers.usda.gov/foodatlas/  This is supposed to be an awesome tool for figuring this stuff out, I, however, can’t get the damn thing to work.  Maybe one of you will have better results.

  I do not think that anyone here would have a real problem with calling this a get healthy program. If you think that most people wouldn’t immediately associate this with weight though, you must not talk to people much. So, the ‘framing’ here isn’t that important as long as the goal here is to get children to be healthier and it seems that is the case.

But, JohnL, pandagon readers aren’t rightwingnuts who foam at any link of Obama + health.  YOu saw how Essie, even at post 200+ is still in denial about what the program plans to do.  Imagine how a Cariboo Barbie would twist this - healthcare plan will be used to take candy away form babies” or some such.

shah8,

Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like the kind of debate I want to engage in—on either side.  Back to lurking!

Shah8, what if you’re already eating a nutritious, well rounded diet with very few things that have empty calories in them, and you’re still fat?  Even when you go to the gym and walk everywhere? 

Then what?

liberalrob,

I can do that, based on the nutritional information on the net.  Panda express actually has calorie counts up, and there are tons of websites that have calorie counts for all kinds of food.  http://www.pandaexpress.com/menu/nutrition.aspx

My argument this whole thread is that people have been acting like weight loss is impossible.  It may not be that much fun, but it is possible.  For those of us (raises hand) that want to/wanted to in the past.

Then you are freakin’ good to go!

You’re fine!

Really!

and over the course of your years, you’ll still probably lose weight or not lose metabolism, and you’ll have the benefit of good health inertia that pushes off whatever latent genetic bombs you have.

For a public health official trying to do large scale work, then the measures have to be different than what you and your doctor works out in figuring out your own health.  Weight, so long as no funding or any other incentives to game the system exist, is generally the best way to evaluate a large set of health issues and outcomes.  Bad for personal, good for group (unless you want to spend a shitload of money and expertise).  This is just not that hard to get!

Calories in/Calories out is factually correct, but it can be a bit misleading. If you’re creating a caloric deficit through cardio and caloric restriction, you’re probably burning muscle as well as fat. If you’re burning muscle along with fat, you’re probably not going to feel great, and you’ll soon stop your “diet.” Once you return to your old habits, though, your caloric needs will be lower than they used to be, on account of you burning up all that muscle. So you’ll gain it all back and more, just like 90% of all dieters.

If you build muscle, you can burn calories more efficiently. Building muscle isn’t easy. You have to lift weight, lots of it. And you do have to get real about what you eat and make sure you’re getting enough protein and stuff. But a lot of women are still really afraid of ending up “huge” as a result of weight training, which all stems from this idea that fitness should look a certain way, and that women should look a certain way.

There were some public health officials that DID oppose it, though, and we didn’t just roll over and say, “Oh, well, public health officials really do know what they are talking about.”

That kind of back-tracking isn’t going to fly.  You were questioning the scientific consensus by claiming that there was scientific consensus against the HPV vaccine, which is a straight-up lie.  A few weirdos /= most public health officials.  The people denying the HPV vaccine’s usefulness are closer to you, Essie, in arguments and tactics than the people who believe that interventions that prevent obesity and/or help people lose weight permanently also prevent heart disease and diabetes.

For phylosopher from way up there I believe:
Link for increasing obesity among Canadian Children courtesy Stats Canada
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100113/dq100113a-eng.htm

And the lowering age of menarche among Canadian girls.  Unfortunately I can only find the abstract online but it sums it up fairly well. Menarche is happening at younger ages in Canada and they are connecting it with the overall rise in weights
http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(08)00346-7/abstract

It would probably be worthwhile to compare to the European Union as well because while both Canada and the EU have similar regulations about dairy products the EU has even more limitations on what can make it’s way into the food chain regarding meat, fish and vegetables.

Now since I haven’t seen much of answer (unless I missed it) regarding to what a starvation diet is:
In general terms it is a diet when you take in less calories than it takes to keep you healthy leading to a lack of essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Often it is started by a sudden drop in calorie consumption which causes the individual’s body to attempt to rapidly conserve energy or go into “starvation mode”.  It does this by hoarding any fat from the food you consume and resists burning fat already in the body.  It often causes the body to feel weak and tired.  For most healthy individuals, “starvation diet” is anything below 1200 calories a day.

Now it will always cause weight loss.  Some people will stop dropping right away because their body does not react strongly to the calorie reduction.  Others however can literally take months before their body becomes will to actually start using it’s stored energy.  The problem however is once you get to this point your body is likely to cannibalize it’s muscle along with it’s fat.

Regardless, for most people it is far healthier to stay at or above 1200 mark and work on burning more calories through exercise.  If you go below that or you make any large reduction in calories you should speak to your doctor and/or nutritionist first.

Shah8, what if you’re already eating a nutritious, well rounded diet with very few things that have empty calories in them, and you’re still fat?  Even when you go to the gym and walk everywhere?

You’re referring to an individual situation.  There’s a number of problems with bringing this up in the context of a discussion about broadly aimed interventions to prevent obesity:

1) Already fat =/ not fat yet.  Doctors and scientists KNOW losing weight is hard, which is why there’s so much emphasis on children and making sure they don’t get to a point where they have to lose weight.  In the same vein, preventing smoking is easier than quitting smoking.

2) Losing weight takes a long time.  The more you have to lose, the longer it will take.

3) Individuals vary.  You may be an outlier. You may have a thyroid condition.  Who the fuck knows?  There’s a good argument for doctors having a more individualized approach to individuals. But this conversation is about trends, not individuals.

I can do that, based on the nutritional information on the net.  Panda express actually has calorie counts up, and there are tons of websites that have calorie counts for all kinds of food.

Do they know what goes into my local China Express’ General Tso’s Chicken or their Happy Family?  How about my dad’s chicken/sausage/turkey gumbo, how many calories in a ladle-full of that?  (First, how much is in a “ladle-full”...)  Is there a difference in calorie content between a Fuji and a Gala apple?  The point is, I have to do all this gumshoe and Google work myself, on top of writing it all down, and that’s just too much to expect.  (What are people who don’t have your leet Intertubez skillz supposed to do?)  People aren’t going to do it unless they’re already committed to doing it as a priority over everything else, or unless you make them.

If you’re burning enough calories through cardio that you’re creating a deficit, you’re going to burn muscle along with the fat. It’s dumb, but it’s what happens. Through strength training, you can make sure you’re burning *less* muscle, though, but probably the best thing to do would be to leave your caloric intake alone for a few months, build some muscle, and go from there.

and 1200 is a really arbitrary number. it depends a lot on your weight and your body fat percentage and all kinds of other stuff.

GGR - both/and.  And you have to break into the circle somewhere. 
take that in conjunction with my other posts - these other foods are available cheaply, and yet people rich and poor aren’t using them because they do not know what to do with them - by their own admission.  There is also an ICk and yes, a lazy factor.  Any guess why chicken breasts are more popular even though 2x more expensive than whole bird?

Thanks, hypatia and agreed.  But that’s still a calories input have an effect on weight argument.

Phylosopher, and I’m trying to point out that they AREN’T available cheaply everywhere.  They just aren’t.  I seem to recall having gone round and round with you about this before in the past.

Is the screaming over?

For phylosopher from way up there I believe:
Link for increasing obesity among Canadian Children courtesy Stats Canada
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100113/dq100113a-eng.htm

And the lowering age of menarche among Canadian girls.  Unfortunately I can only find the abstract online but it sums it up fairly well. Menarche is happening at younger ages in Canada and they are connecting it with the overall rise in weights
http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(08)00346-7/abstract

This is why I’m surprised that there have been so few people asking the questions about endocrine disruptors I mentioned earlier.  They are widespread, they cause exactly these symptoms, and their long-term use and distribution seem to correspond with areas where these symptoms is on the rise.

Doubtless there are dozens of other factors, but it seems like environmental ones are likely to be crucial from a public health perspective.

They aren’t now. There were some public health officials that DID oppose it, though, and we didn’t just roll over and say, “Oh, well, public health officials really do know what they are talking about.” Which is what you are saying now, about childhood obesity.

Are you referring to the whole kerfuffle that happened in Texas when Gov. Perry issued an executive order to mandate all teenage girls to be vaccinated with Gardasil?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16948093/from/RS.4/

There weren’t public health officials protesting, but there were a lot of wingnut fundagelicals in the state legislature and “parent’s rights groups” who thought giving their daughters the vaccine would turn them into Slutty McSluttersons.  They weren’t “public health officials”.

Would you care to link an instance in recent history of public health officials (not ideologicals politicians or pundits) saying that we shouldn’t offer HPV vaccine to teenage girls?

Re: environmental factors, isn’t our environment, for all the challenges we have, CLEANER than it was in, say, the ‘60s? It’s certainly true that we have less smog thanks to improved technology and pollution standards, and I don’t see the Great Lakes catching on fire any more.

Ben D.,

Regardless of clean air, jamie d. has a good point about endocrine disruptors.  Those are scary fuckers, and are more common than they used to be.  I brought them up in the vaccine thread (not because they’re necessarily in vaccines, but as an environmental toxin) and crickets.  chirping.

I’ve read this whole thread—thanks, bronchitis!—and the level of sheer denial of reality on the part of Essie and her supporters is boggling. What Ms. Obama et al are trying to prevent is childhood OBESITY. Because obese kids become still more obese adults, and obesity directly correlates with all kinds of horrible, expensive and life-shortening outcomes. So Essie’s claim that BMI “overweight” people have the best outcomes is out of the scope of the argument regardless of whether it’s actually true. Obese kids don’t grow up to become BMI “overweight”, so it doesn’t matter. And since with obesity and especially morbid obesity, the negative outcomes are extremely clear, she’s being disingenuous by suggesting that because BMI “overweight” people can still be healthy, which is arguably true, therefore attempts to reduce childhood obesity are rooted in “fat-shaming” and not in an attempt to save lives (and money) by preventing adulthood obesity by catching it before it’s too late.

Just because you’re upset because random strangers keep hassling you for being overweight even though you’re healthy—which would piss me off, too—doesn’t mean that we, as a society, should tolerate obesity, especially among children: it’s cruel and extremely expensive. There’s certainly a point to be made that someone who is, say, a size 14 ought not to be hassled because it’s hard to tell unless you know her well whether it’s because she’s healthy and big-boned or just a total pig. But Ms. Obama’s issue isn’t targeted at future size 14’s: it’s targeted at kids who, if nothing is done now, will be the size 26’s of the 2020s, and there is every evidence that being a size 26 is fatal. Your evidence is out of the scope of your argument, and if you were in my class, I’d totally fail your paper because you wasted pages and pages arguing something completely irrelevant. And you’d probably still come to my office hours and crab about it.

Shah8, what if you’re already eating a nutritious, well rounded diet with very few things that have empty calories in them, and you’re still fat?  Even when you go to the gym and walk everywhere?

And you’ve been checked for PCOS, low thyroid, and insulin resistance?  Contrary to what quite a number of lazy doctors seem to think, overweight is often a symptom of an underlying health problem, not a primary cause of health problems, and telling your patient with low thyroid to lose weight is completely useless, because s/he can’t.

Regardless of clean air, jamie d. has a good point about endocrine disruptors.  Those are scary fuckers, and are more common than they used to be.  I brought them up in the vaccine thread (not because they’re necessarily in vaccines, but as an environmental toxin) and crickets.  chirping.

That’s because it might just mean that some other environmental factor besides vaccines are the problem, and they wouldn’t have a reason not to vaccinate.  Those folks tend to only hear what they want to hear.

But yes, that’s yet another reason to look into a comprehensive review of the environmental toxicology of endocrine disruptors and their effect on public health.  There is real reason to look for a link between them and autism, amongst other things.

Maybe I’m being overly simplistic, but it seems like a good idea to try and at least investigate what may be a common source for several pressing issues in public health.

No, jamie d, actually, the anti-vaxx crowd was being pissed on for blaming autism on “chemicals.”  If the chemicals are endocrine disruptors, my point was they might be right.

And yeah, I agree.  We should study that shit and probably remove it from our food/cosmetic/cleaners supply.

Oh, and for the love of all that’s righteous, stop talking about thermodynamics!  Only people who has actually seen a thermo equation or two, or at least familiar with the Carnot Cycle are permitted to use that holy name!

*sigh* anyways, the original bastard point was pretty simple, that unless you have severe digestive issues (or many other illnesses), it really freakin’ is:

calories consumed is calories stored or used.
Comment #282: shah8 on 02/09 at 05:50 PM

Straight A’s in all my core Physics major classes in college, including Thermo.

You seem to be assuming you know what calories used will be based on activity level.  That’s just not true.  Your body can decide to use up a lot, or a little.  Depending on muscle mass, yes, but also on whatever metabolic rate your body thinks is right for the situation.  If it thinks you’re in a famine, it will minimize burn rate.  Until we know what causes different bodies to have different metabolic rates, we can’t make simple statements about how much food one person “should” consume.

“Until we know what causes different bodies to have different metabolic rates, we can’t make simple statements about how much food one person ‘should’ consume. “

Which is different than saying if you eat more calories than you need, you will put on weight, and if you adjust calories downward and manage to control the other inputs, i.e., exercise and the things you do to keep yourself warm, you will lose weight.  Yes, your body will adjust somewhat, and yes, you should keep that in mind if you actually do cut calories, but cutting calories does = losing weight.  There are better and worse ways to go about that, and looking into the literature/going onto body recomp. boards, investigating muscle loss and the role of aerobics and weight-lifting in healthfulness are all good things.

And again, I think it is totally up to the individual—if they don’t want to lose weight because they don’t think it impacts their health, that is up to them.  If they are having a harder than average time losing weight, such that it indicates an underlying medical condition, that might be a good thing to look into, because of the underlying medical condition, not because of the weight, necessarily.  (Yes, I realize there is a certain amount of privilege tied up with being able to look into medical conditions.  Grrr stupid health-care bill killers.)

Another good point that I think has been glossed over is Mnemosyne’s point that with changes in portion control and all the crap that has been dumped in our food (i.e., HFCS) we are ingesting a lot of crap that makes us heavier, isn’t healthful, and really isn’t that tasty, either.  But it is easy to eat.  And some of it makes us crave more of it.  (Put sugar in stuff = blood sugar rises = blood sugar crashes = crave more sugary/starchy stuff.)

what she said.  Or maybe that paragraph right after the quote, hmmm?

cutting calories does = losing weight. 
Comment #317: Ismone on 02/09 at 09:16 PM

Assuming that reducing calories doesn’t trigger the body into changing its metabolism rate.

Look, not only is there a lot of money involved if you want to investigate what seems like an impossible relationship between your caloric intake and your weight, you also have to get past eleventy-million doctors who think you’re lying if you say you ate less and exercised and still haven’t lost weight or gotten smaller.

@ shah8

I work in rehabilitation, focused on getting people, many with chronic, purportedly ‘obesity-related illness,’ back on their feet.

Here’s some of what we measure, in terms of health outcomes (and yes, we’re required to measure outcomes!):

Endurance

Strength

Heart Rate (rest and activity)

Blood Pressure

Oxygen saturation (how much oxygen is getting into your blood—how efficiently your heart and lungs are working, roughly.)

Here’s what we don’t give a fuck about:

“Obesity.”

Significant weight loss, even in “obese” people, is considered a health RISK.

People who are losing weight in a health-care facility get their calories counted to make sure they eat enough.  They get consults with the dietitian, they get lab tests, they get re-assessed by nursing, they get extra visits from the doctor.  They get extra work-ups by rehab therapies, they get dental visits.

People are ALARMED at weight loss.

We monitor weight to make sure people don’t lose it.  Yes, even the ‘obese’ ones.

THAT is good health care.

The idea that chronic illnesses are fixed by weight-loss is bunkum.

@ Amanda

So in terms of measuring outcomes?

There are many outcomes much more directly tied to health, and less loaded with risks to growth, development, and self-image, than weight/BMI.

In terms of outcomes, weight is a ‘surrogate end-point’ and not a very good one.

Oldfeminist, your metabolism can slow, but only so much.  I learned through trial and error, that dropping to 1800 wasn’t enough for me to lose significant weight, that 1500 was better, but that between 1200 and 1500 was what it took for me.  I’m good at counting calories and able-bodied.  While there is some variation between people, if someone is eating 2000+ now, and cuts down to 1500 or so, they will either lose weight or stop putting on as much weight.  Unless the stop burning as many calories by lowering their activity levels.  (Or do something really weird with the balance between carbohydrates and fat.)  Yes, there is some variation based on what you’re eating, and yes, it can be unfun.

/me shrugs…

Again, going back to the personal doc phase—It’s pretty damn easy to check up on whether if someone’s not following a meal plan and not exercising…eventually.  There are plenty of docs that prefer to be lazy, and you need to find one that will listen to you if you’re having trouble.  Moreover, in most people’s situation, oldfeminist, doctors tell you to lose weight but won’t be serious about advising you or following up…It’d just be your funeral.  The people who do get harrangues?  Those are the guys who have serious health issues that are directly aggravated by weight.  People get upset if they are invested in your welfare and you won’t do things like take your pills regularly, watch what you eat, or do any number of things when you have a serious illness.

This is just not a joke, nor is it a playground for ideology, ok?  Again:  No sane, ethical, and empathetic doctor is going to lack understanding about the difficulty of losing weight.  They see tons of people every year, and many of them have weight issues that largely *must* be dealt with.  They have to rely on caregivers to nag them about not using too much salt, and about taking your blood sugar measurement.  They interact with insurance companies and hospitals that can be hostile to care for the obese.  Everyone, especially the younger professionals, understands the concept of fat-shaming.  The new, better, research on obesity are first read by these professionals first.  Health comes first, because it’s *the* core nugget of meaningful wealth.

Kayt...

The operative word here is signifcant unexplained weight loss.  Moreover, much of the time, it’s that the damage occurs and it’s too damn late to fix anything.  When your knees or back is shot, it’s too damn late.  When you’re full out diabetic, it’s too damn late.  If you have many of the other consequences, it’s too fucking damned late.  It’s too late to be even sorry about it, because the damage often prevents people from being able remediate their situation.  They can’t walk anymores.  They have to take drugs that really mess with their metabolism.  So yes, when one of your patients loses 10lbs all of a sudden (and they ain’t anything but lethargic) then it really is time to panic.

Moreover, in most people’s situation, oldfeminist, doctors tell you to lose weight but won’t be serious about advising you or following up…It’d just be your funeral. 
Comment #323: shah8 on 02/09 at 10:03 PM

But if weight is a problem, then why do they so often not give actually good advice rather than just “eat less, exercise more”?  Why is it that their advice so rarely works?

There would be a lot less argument against the universal prescription to lose weight if there were actually good easy ways to do it healthfully and long-term.  But when the usual advice doesn’t work, it seems more likely that the response is “you must be cheating” rather than “let’s figure out why.”

At the very point where the patient needs good advice from the doctor, they get “lose weight.”  That’s like telling a depressed person to snap out of it, or “cheer up.”

No, jamie d, actually, the anti-vaxx crowd was being pissed on for blaming autism on “chemicals.” If the chemicals are endocrine disruptors, my point was they might be right.

I realized after posting that you might have meant it that way.  The difference is that, unlike vaccines, there is real evidence that environmental effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals produce these sort of effects.  I am hesitant to jump to the conclusion that all our problems can be blamed on this one simple thing, but there is definitely reason to follow this up with further study.  The whole hot-button topic of autism is only one part of it;  this obesity epidemic is another.  No, of course it’s not a silver bullet.  But when we know we have, society-wide, a measurable level chemical exposure to compounds which research indicates may cause obesity, even effect our predisposition to lifelong heath problems and cause reproductive harm, it seems like a no-brainer to at least look into ways in which they might be a contributing factor and to consider addressing them as a part of a society-wide comprehensive program to reduce obesity.

That happens alot, oldfeminist, which is why I made that caveat.  It’s just one of the stupid facts of life.  It can be hard to make real changes in your behavior and most people resent it when someone else tells them to do so.  Then that someone is indifferent or unhelpfull…

oldfeminist,

I think you make a good point about the doctor’s advice.  Even if they think you should lose weight, what they should really do is figure out what it is that you are doing.  If a patient is being sedentary/eating poorly, discussing why that is happening might be helpful.  Are they not exercising because they don’t have time?  Find it unpleasant?  Have unrealistic ideas about having to exercise intensely in order t obtain benefits?  Etc., etc.  And then, if the patient reports doing all these things, and still appears to be gaining weight at an unhealthy/unexpected clip, keeping a food diary and/or looking for metabolic conditions might be a good next step.  All this stuff can be done without telling the patient they’re “too fat” or whatever or vaguely telling them to “diet” which means different things to different people.

That said, if someone actually wants to lose weight, the best way to do so is probably to read as much as they can about nutrition, cardio vs. weightlifting, and maybe spend some time on relevant boards, i.e., weightlifting boards, etc.  (Although warning—some people on those boards clearly have some kind of dysmorphia/food issue—it doesn’t trigger me but it might not be the best environment for others.)

jamie d, so as not to derail, checkout the link in my comment 100 on the latest vaxx thread.

The idea that chronic illnesses are fixed by weight-loss is bunkum.

...In terms of outcomes, weight is a ‘surrogate end-point’ and not a very good one.
Comment #320: Kayt on 02/09 at 09:55 PM

try telling that to many an arthritis sufferer who improves after weight loss - including my damn horse.  Extra weight damages joints.  or doesn’t that count as chronic illness?

I highly recommend Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He discusses why the “calories in/calories out” argument isn’t correct, and why the rate of obesity has been increasing.

I came across the book when I read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, as it was one of her source materials. After reading those books(and a couple of others)I decided to go paleo as a lifestyle choice-gave up all starches and sugar. I effortlessly lost 12 pounds within a month and i feel better than i have in a long time, I have a lot more energy, and I’m not even that strict about it.

And I have to thank you Amanda for introducing me to Keith’s book.

There would be a lot less argument against the universal prescription to lose weight if there were actually good easy ways to do it healthfully and long-term.  But when the usual advice doesn’t work, it seems more likely that the response is “you must be cheating” rather than “let’s figure out why.”

At the very point where the patient needs good advice from the doctor, they get “lose weight.” That’s like telling a depressed person to snap out of it, or “cheer up.”
Comment #325: oldfeminist on 02/09 at 10:53 PM

Mus tbe a lot of docs out their violating hippa and confidentiality for you to know what every doctor tells every patient - where do you think referrals to endocrinologists come from.  But as a least invasive low cost first step - lose weight is perfectly legitimate advice.

That’s why “doc, my head hurts does get a “take two aspirin and call me in the morning”  instead of “STAT! open the cranium!”

these kids are fat? In what universe? Sure, maybe this kid, but the Obama kids, I think not. It’s difficult to talk about health when we idolize people who are distinctly, unhealthily thin.

Taubes is right about much of what he wrote in Good Calories, Bad Calories, but no, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.  Your body will do many things to hold onto it or let it go, but it’s still largely the truth.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/360/9/859?rss=1&query=current

Ultimately, it’s all about getting people to eat (and sometimes drink) better.  It’s empty calories that really can be disposed of.  Eating a diet with diverse foods and complete nutritionally will be great for you, even if you don’t actually reduce the calories.  Getting out and walking some, takeing the stairs when you can will be great for you even if you don’t hit the gym.  Doing a little bit of everything, entertaining a sense of proportion, and listening to your body as you live life will reap genuine benefit, even if you don’t see it on the scale.  The idea is to do things sustainably.  Don’t go wild trying to get instant results.  Do stuff you can manage to do for the rest of your life, because it’s a lifelong habit you’re trying to encourage.

Deciding that the problem is that I’m five pounds over the BMI cutoff and that I should exercise and eat less to combat that leads, in my particular case, to circuits of fasting and overeating and a lot of American-female body-image type crazy that does not make me thinner or healthier. Weight might be an important metric for researchers, but it’s also our culture’s stand-in for pretty much all of its anxieties about the body, the appetite, and virtue.

That’s why it’s so hard to even have these conversations.  On the one side, you have people who are looking at the society-wide, epidemiological trends and saying, “Hmm, as average weight across all populations goes up, so do health problems like Type II diabetes.  We should probably look into that.”  On the other side, you have, well, everyone who’s been raised in this culture to think of food as both villain and angel, something that can comfort you in bad times but is also the enemy that must be shunned in order to reach perfection, which is probably about 90 percent of us to one degree or another. 

Obviously, since we’ve constructed food as an emotional outlet in this society, trying to discuss it in a neutral way is almost impossible because it’s going to trigger a whole lot of feelings in most people.

Take G for a minute.  We were talking last night about his recent weight loss (he had about 18 extra pounds, mostly due to work stress, bad eating (because of work) and not exercising regularly anymore, so he kept a food diary and went back to the gym a couple times a week) and he said that his mother used to have a freakout whenever he or his siblings would do anything to try and lose weight.  That’s because his father had a midlife crisis that included deciding to get into better shape (running and becoming a vegetarian) and she is absolutely, 100 percent convinced that it was his weight loss that caused their divorce.  Apparently, she thinks exercise does something strange to your brain that makes you decide you don’t like being married.  So of course any attempt by her children to lose weight is a direct rejection of her.

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that we live 2000 miles away?  I love her, I really do, she’s a very nice woman, but she’s crazy.

Oh, and I random thought I had while driving home:  it seems like this sudden rise in things like restaurant portion sizes and endless variations on junk food (Flamin’ Hot Cheetos?  Really?) coincided with stagnating wages for the middle class and a greater reliance on credit just to get by.  As though having an abundance of cheap food made people less likely to realize that their local factory was closing down and the only job they could get was in retail.  I know correlation /= causation but ... it’s awfully convenient.

Boy, there’s nothing like a post about weight to rile up some people in Left Blogistan. This is starting to remind me of the Great Sammich Debate of Ought Seven on Sadly No! where 4 or 5 cranks spend a day totally derailing a thread with hundreds of posts taking offense at the idea that obesity is not a good thing.

Now, if only you could get 336 comments on a post about rape, misogyny or war.

Now, if only you could get 336 comments on a post about rape, misogyny or war.

All you ugly fat chicks need to stop whining and donate your baby donuts to the war effort!

Bam! Done!

...Oh, you said “about” not “incorporating.” ;p

Re. the issue of laws of thermodynamics vs. dieting:

It seems not unlike binary and computer software. Understanding how 1’s and 0’s work isn’t going to give you an understanding of programming or let you hack the Pentagon, but it’s also ridiculous to say that binary gets thrown out the window when talking about game graphics or something. Just because it’s not immediately obvious how a fundamental law/concept works in application *doesn’t* mean that you can just ignore that law. You need to build on it, and try to refine your understanding within the parameters set by that law. Bodies are complicated (more so than computers!) but that doesn’t mean we don’t conserve mass and energy just like everything else.

Bagelsan, that was a good analogy…

Just because it’s not immediately obvious how a fundamental law/concept works in application *doesn’t* mean that you can just ignore that law. You need to build on it, and try to refine your understanding within the parameters set by that law. Bodies are complicated (more so than computers!) but that doesn’t mean we don’t conserve mass and energy just like everything else.
Comment #339: Bagelsan on 02/10 at 03:06 AM

Of course the law of thermodynamics still applies when it comes to bodies and food.  I don’t think anyone has claimed otherwise.

It’s just that the inputs and outputs have to be fully defined.  And the outputs can change, possibly as a function of the inputs.  We move quickly from the realm of simple algebra to calculus or differential equations.

Starting from “calories in = calories out” is extremely deceptive when the common definition of “calories out” is “exercise.”  It casts variations in metabolic rate and calorie-burning as outlier conditions rather than integral to the way your body tries to maintain an equilibrium. 

And I think that your body’s propensity toward maintaining an equilibrium is good for our bodies, or we wouldn’t have developed it.

but oldfeminist, we developed it when food was a lot more scarce.  And when food wasn’t so high in carbs that blood sugar spikes and crashes would create cravings.

And I’ve been consistently discussing other outputs—lethargy, exercise, and after I was prompted upthread, yes, the fact we might want to put on a sweater if it was cold and we were eating less.

And I think that your body’s propensity toward maintaining an equilibrium is good for our bodies, or we wouldn’t have developed it.

Certainly maintaining a general equilibrium isn’t a bad evolutionary strategy at all, I just think that various recent (last few decades) factors have shifted that equilibrium point over further than may be healthy. The equilibrium that Joe Smith maintained 100 years ago at 150 pounds may have shifted up to 200 pounds now. Still an equilibrium, and still in = out, but definitely heavier, and possibly less healthy*.

I think it’s important to recognize that there has been a population shift and that it’s *not* happening over the kind of long timescale humans can evolve fast enough to keep up with. I don’t think that people are suddenly worse people than they were 50 years ago, or that people 50 years ago were virtuous and pure while we all snarf donuts all day or something, but there has definitely been some kind of environmental change to explain the change in weight and fatness, and food consumption (what kinds and how much) is a good environmental factor to look at, among others.

*When seen in the entire population, not necessarily in Joe. Joe could be totally ripped and running 10 miles a day. But that just means that Bob is making up for Ripped Joe by being not very healthy at all, and fat to go with it, in order to give us the overall trend we’re seeing of a fatter and (maybe coincidentally) less healthy population.

Of course the law of thermodynamics still applies when it comes to bodies and food.  I don’t think anyone has claimed otherwise.

Well, they were getting there…

Essie said:

But we can’t get past thermodynamics.
Only if you believe that bodies are controlled by a single, simple law.

keshmeshi said:

And it’s not fucking thermodynamics.  The human body is designed to fight weight loss.  It’s basic evolutionary biology for fuck’s sake.

It really is “fucking” thermodynamics; it’s thermodynamics and metabolic efficiency and epigenetics and calorie densities and all that. You can’t just ignore the bits you aren’t able to explain well yet: a good theory has to fit the data, still (and obey laws of nature.) Bodies are controlled by a “simple” law *among* other controls. I’m not sure why this is controversial, but apparently with some people it is.

Bagelsan-Of course our bodies obey the laws of thermodynamics, but that doesn’t mean that calories taken in must be either used in exercise, or stored as fat. Our bodies don’t absorb 100% of the calories that we take in and the basal metabolic rate does not stay constant even when you are sedentary. Protein calories are not utilized for energy unless there is a lack of carbohydrate and fat calories, and fat calories are not immediately transported to fat cells for storage unless there are abundant carbohydrates to burn as fuel and raise insulin levels-insulin is the prime mover of fat storage. That is why a diet low carbohydrate-especially refined carbohydrates-work.

Pablo, the way you’re referring to calories is a bit odd—a “calorie” (or kilocalorie, if you want to be picky) is just a unit of energy. While lipids, sugars, amino acids, etc are all treated differently by the body a “calorie” is a little more constant (even though its source and ease-of-extraction, if you will, varies.)

That was my point. The source of the calorie matters.

I wasn’t saying that rising equilibrium points are necessarily good for everyone.  Just that the ability to keep an equilibrium is good.  Gaining and losing weight rapidly is probably bad for us, or we wouldn’t have this inherent tendency towards equilibrium.

It may be that we are built to grab a setpoint sometime around age 15 to 20, and afterwards have difficulty moving far off it.  And we may especially have difficulty moving downward, because evolution doesn’t favor those who starve.  Those diseases that get associated with weight (whether they are cause or effect or just correlation based on a third factor) don’t kill until after you’ve reproduced; starvation is quick.

Source of the calorie does matter, of course—calories from alcohol can’t be converted into fat, for example.  That’s why you see some rickety skinny alcoholics who drink thousands of calories a day in alcohol, and why you can wake up in the middle of the night with what feels like a sugar buzz if you’ve been drinking shots all night.

If you don’t believe calories from booze can become fat, please let me introduce you to my butt.  Ever heard of a beer belly?

Also, if it is the case that people tend to develop a set point or range of weight sometime between ages 15 and 20 (and I have no idea if this is the case), then it seems that targeting obesity in children is extra super-duper important because of the increased difficulty they will have losing weight as adults if they aren’t in a healthy weight range by their teen years.

No way is there a set point between 15-20.  I was between 135-145 at all times between those ages, and if I do not watch what I eat, I’ve been able to put on at least 24 pounds more than the upper end of that.

If you don’t believe calories from booze can become fat, please let me introduce you to my butt.  Ever heard of a beer belly?
Comment #349: Anony Mouse on 02/10 at 06:56 PM

Ask a biochemist.  There is no chemical pathway that turns alcohol into fat. 

Your beer butt and belly are fed by caloric components of the beer other than the alcohol.  Plus, I’m guessing you probably eat actual food from time to time.  You can burn off the alcohol in your blood but store calories from the wheat in beer, other food and drink. 

The rickety-ass skinny alkies drink vodka and don’t eat anything.  No matter how much they drink, they will never gain fat, because what they take in in calories can’t turn into fat. 

No way is there a set point between 15-20.  I was between 135-145 at all times between those ages, and if I do not watch what I eat, I’ve been able to put on at least 24 pounds more than the upper end of that.
Comment #350: Ismone on 02/10 at 07:21 PM

It was just a theory.

But come on.  24 pounds?  That’s really not that much.  I’m talking about people setting at 100, or 140, or 200, or 350, at those ages.  A general range.  Everyone seems to gain as they age, if they aren’t super-rigorous about food, but it seems to me that people normally don’t move to a whole new range.  Folk who were 140 lbs at age 15-20, over time, more often become 160-170, not 300-350. 

This isn’t everyone, obviously.  Cue sixteen kazillion people telling me about the exceptions, and I will agree there are more than a few.

But it seems to be a common pattern.  Look at a group of friends “then and now” and generally speaking the skinny one is still the skinny one, the fat one is still the fat one, and they’re all bigger. 

If we can figure out why many people do fit the pattern, and why some people don’t, perhaps people who want to lose (or gain) weight can use that knowledge to change their setpoint without a huge struggle.

oldfeminist, perhaps Bagelsan can come back with more details but…

1)  Alcohol DOES metabolize into fat.  Much, much, much less than other sources of calories, but they do.

2)  People have beer bellies and thunder thighs because alcohol suppresses fat metabolism (in part because the reason most alcohol isn’t converted into fat is because it’s converted into ketones which is *past* the metabolic cycle that creates and destroys lipids).  Fat is a checkbook, and when you metabolize alcohol, the body doesn’t needs to cash any checks.  Thin people won’t gain too much in the way of fat (you have to be a true alcoholic in order to gain nothing), but overweight people will gain fatty weight/not lose weight.

3)  Alcohol can interfere with hormonal pathways in ways that cause mild weight gain and drive that gain into fat rather than muscle.

4)  Alcohol also tends to give you the munchies…on top of the knowlege that a better time with fewer regrets can be had if you eat.

5)  Yes, yes you can lose weight if you drink more, but that mostly is a very shallow effect…drinking a wine instead of a soft drink as part of a regulated diet will result in greater weight loss.  Drinking much more would be counterproductive, much like smoking as a means of appetite control.

oldfem,

If I hadn’t started eating less, I would have kept getting bigger.

If it was just about promoting healthy eating and moderate activity, why not just have the program be about that. Why not just talk about health? Do you all think that children are stupid? That they won’t know exactly what an “anti-obesity program” means? You think this is free of shaming? Well, you’re lying to yourselves to try to absolve yourself of the promotion of a bias you clearly want to cling to.

Making the campaign about reducing the existence of fat children is precisely what makes this about shaming fat people. In this case, young fat people. Health is not the measure of success. Weight loss is. But healthy eating and moderate activity hasn’t actually been shown to reliably lead to weight loss. It HAS been shown to improve health, but not to lower weight. So by making the prevalence of fat people to measure of success, this plan does everything that has inspired a culture of fat hatred for decades. Its not about health, its about fat. And everyone understands it. And fat children WILL be shamed over this. Because guess what? THEY ALREADY KNOW THEY ARE FAT. They are told they are fat constantly. By teachers, family, doctors, classmates. They are repeatedly reminded that they are fat and they know full well that this is just another reminder about how wrong they are.

Fat stigmatization, on a policy level as much as a personal level, has been the only socially acceptable response to fat people for decades. What has it got to show for itself? All of you who are wringing your hands are the horror of fat children, what exactly are you hitching your wagon to here? Anti-fat bias has not made people healthier. It hasn’t made them happier. It sure hasn’t made them weigh less. Yet more of a system with such a shocking record of failure doesn’t surprise me. The self-righteous endorsement of fat stigmatization doesn’t surprise me. But it sure does disappoint me, because fat people deserve better. Fat children deserve better. The health care needs of fat people have been repeatedly failed by a culture which blames us and never thinks about actually serving our needs. There is no safe and reliable way to make a fat person into a not-fat person. Prevention just persists in the notion that we’re all to blame for being fat. These ideas have failed and they will fail again and again until we try something new. Until we give up on shaming fat people. I hope that day comes eventually, but its clearly not coming any time soon. I’m sure as heck not going to be happy about that, though.

“If I hadn’t started eating less, I would have kept getting bigger. “

And so what worked for you MUST work for everyone, is that it?

++

“What has it got to show for itself? All of you who are wringing your hands are the horror of fat children, what exactly are you hitching your wagon to here?”

Absolutely fucking nothing, of course. Except indulging in some old fashion bigotry couched in bullshit concern trolling.  After all, it’s as simple as eating healthier and less! That will magically make EVERYONE thin, and when it doesn’t, it will be because those lazy disgusting fatties just didn’t BELIEVE it enough!

Must be nice to be thin, live comfy and encased in thin privilege, never having had to deal with weight issues except tangentially, and yet know absolutely that those who do have to live it are wrong about their experiences, lives, and health because it doesn’t line up with what thin privilegers WANT to be true.  What special snowflakes they are, deigning to help the confused fatties about what’s real!

Well the program in question isn’t proposing to use “anti-fat bias” or “shaming fat people” as a means to help get kids get healthier.  It’s proposing getting healthier foods into schools, getting schools to allot more time and resources for physical activity (many schools don’t even have recess anymore), making healthy foods available in underserved communities and eliminating food deserts, and giving consumers information so they can make more informed food choices.  Since this program is addressing childhood obesity at the cultural, community and economic level, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that this program is about assigning individual blame.

Oddly, the only people here who are saying anything in the realm of “lazy disgusting fatties” are the ones who seem to oppose a program aimed to help children and families struggling with obesity.  I think that most people are aware that managing weight, good health, nutrition, etc. is tremendously challenging even for those of us who do have access to healthy food and the ability to exercise and damn near impossible for those who don’t.  If it were easy, we wouldn’t need a damn program.  The proliferation of childhood obesity isn’t about some failure of individual virtue; there are systemic and institutional forces that are really powerful and need to be addressed at a policy level if we want a healthy society.  And individuals who are trying to improve their health through diet and exercise need support in the form of accessible and affordable healthy food, pedestrian-friendly streets and community centers and parks, and accurate information. 

Look, I can support an anti-illiteracy program and not think that people who can’t read are stupid, degenerate or unworthy of dignity and respect.  I can support programs that aim to reduce teen pregnancy and still respect and support teenage parents.  So if I support a program that aims to reduce childhood obesity, it does not follow that I hate fat people.  That’s pretty ridiculous.  I can want to help people who don’t have access to good food or chances to be active, want kids to get to learn about their bodies and how to keep them healthy, want kids to get a fighting chance at growing to be an adult with a healthy body, good health habits and accurate knowledge and simultaneously believe that all people should be treated with respect, fairness and dignity regardless of their body type and that no one should be shamed or discriminated for who they are or how they look.

Finally, if you are an adult who has access to good food and the chance to be active, then this program isn’t about you.  You are an adult and you can make decisions for yourself about what you can, want or are willing to do.  But I think it’s pretty callous to oppose giving at least the option of eating healthy and moving to people who don’t have the chance to eat good foods or be active.  Really, there are plenty of kids who just don’t have access to good food and who don’t get a chance to be active and it’s those kids this program is really trying to help.

355,

If you don’t think that the fact that we (in general, as a culture) eat more than our RDA of calories and don’t move around very much and eat foods high in sugar/starches that create blood sugar spikes, crashes, and then cravings has anything to do with our collective increase in weight, well, then—I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Try it for yourself.  Eat 3500 calories per day for a week, monitor your weight on the scale for that week and the week following, and see what happens.  Then taper down to say 1800, or whatever is comfortable for you, for one week, and measure the delta all the way through two weeks.  Aside from deltas caused by water retention/period stuff (if that is an issue for you), you’re going to see some kind of correlation.  More weight will go on when you’re eating more calories.  (The reason I say two weeks is it does seem to take a little time.)  Try it, and prove me wrong.  Depending on your activity levels, temperature where you live, what you’re wearing, etc., I can’t tell you what those will be, but it’s gonna happen.  Unless you really change the macronutrient balance of what you eat those two times.

Yeah, it gets tougher in the long run, but I can promise you, it does work.  There are some interesting/sneaky/tricky things involving individual metabolism, carbohydrate/fat/protein balance, weightlifting vs. aerobic activity, but calories in calories out is a huge factor, and unless those other factors dramatically change, a *controlling* one.

Bagelsan:
It really is “fucking” thermodynamics; it’s thermodynamics and metabolic efficiency and epigenetics and calorie densities and all that. You can’t just ignore the bits you aren’t able to explain well yet: a good theory has to fit the data, still (and obey laws of nature.) Bodies are controlled by a “simple” law *among* other controls. I’m not sure why this is controversial, but apparently with some people it is.

I think what’s controversial is the idea that calorie counting is all it takes to lose weight - which is slightly different from saying it’s not a matter of calories in vs. calories out. The reality is that applying the “calories in. vs. calories out” model is not simple. So the basic physics is not in question, it’s just that measuring all the inputs and rates relevant to this calculation is pretty much impossible for the average person. Even if I assume that all calorie labels are 100% accurate and I track all my inputs, how do I accurately measure my output? There are standard equations but not everyone has the same metabolic rate, and those equations don’t account for changes in your metabolic rate once you start cutting back calories, sooooo….what should I do? Without regular (weekly, at least monthly) access to a doctor with the proper equipment to constantly measure the right variables and adjust the diet accordingly, this is a dead end for most people. And because they know that already - because they have tried this approach many, many times already and it hasn’t worked, not because of a personal failing but because it is impossible to apply on your own - they get frustrated with people simply repeating it to them without acknowledging the reality of what it takes to really truly measure calories in and calories out.

Antiope,

I think that’s a fair concern—but the “easiest” way to address it is to gradually change your calorie input, and before you do, get a good sense of your activity levels, what you set the thermostat at in your house, car, etc.  Then do your best to keep those constant.

For people who want resources, I think there are a number of good resources on the net—just reading a lot about nutrition and exercise (and I mean the good stuff—studies, not just webpages), can make it easier for people to try different things and come up with something that works for them.  In my case, although this may or may not help me with any weight loss goals, I switched from sweetened nonfat lattes (I know, such a liberal) to unsweetened full-fat ones.  Particularly when I was tired, my hands used to get really severe tremors.  I thought it was the caffeine.  It probably wasn’t.  It probably was the sugar.  Because I don’t get them any more.  So since I started cutting sugar because of weight loss concerns, I noticed other health benefits.  (I’m pushing 30 and have had tremors in my hands for my entire life.  Sometimes they’re barely noticeable, other times, it makes it hard for me to do things that involve really fine motor skills.)  So yeah, even though I’ve probably started the calories in calories out thing on this thread, you are correct that it is complex to track calories out, but I think we know what the main outputs are.  Even if we cannot mathematically track how quickly someone will gain or lose weight by controlling those outputs, that doesn’t mean each person can’t gradually figure it out. 

And anything that encourages people to get in the habit of moving around, doing active things, or eating more whole foods particularly fruits and vegetables is a really good thing.  Although I do wish we could focus more on the joy of movement, or just the joy of going outside and having unstructured time, rather than this whole implicit weight loss angle.

It really is “fucking” thermodynamics; it’s thermodynamics and metabolic efficiency and epigenetics and calorie densities and all that.

*headesk*

Well, yeah, it’s thermodynamics, the problem is that it’s not just the *first law* of thermodynamics.

The whole fucking point of burning calories in the first place is to fight the second law of thermodynamics - entropy.  So going around talking about the first law of thermodynamics (calories in = calories out) and claiming that’s all there is to physics of it?  Acting as if the rest is just biological details/conditions, that the core is thermodynamics - where thermodynamics = the first law and nothing else?  That’s just stupid.

No one (well, no one I know) is saying that pigging out and never moving around won’t result in a weight increase in most people, we are just saying that most people who are fat aren’t fat because they eat more or are less active *than anyone else.*  AND that skinny =/= healthy Also fat =/= unhealthy.  Being healthy = being healthy.  And there are so many better ways to measure that than fat.

*glares at my stupid fucking Wii fit that doesn’t get that strength training builds muscle*