A warning to Steve et al who thrive on Micky, Tim, Wendy and the King (As well as Hellman, Velveeta and Cheze Whip)

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
#56

No doubt some have reasons for weight issues that are beyond their control, such as genetics or childhood trauma. But I am pretty sure that is a small minority given the enormous number who have serious, debilitating weight issues. Take a look at this chart.

image
image1800×1180 205 KB

I am a geneticist and I can think of no genetic mechanism to explain such a rise in obesity in the past 40 years. America is a wealthy country with lots high caloric food choices and reduced need for physical exertion, which gives an obvious reason why American might weigh more than they should. But obesity is the extreme, and we have reached the point where over 40% of Americans are not simply overweight but are clinically obese. In fact, there are more obese Americans than overweight ones!

Unlike other physical attributes, obesity is a problem that impacts everyone. It significantly increases the risks of all sorts of chronic diseases as well as dementia and so is a major factor in rising health costs, particularly impacting medicare and medicaid. I doubt that we can control health care costs without controlling obesity rates. So obesity is not just a personal issue, it is a problem affecting the entire community.

Fact is that obesity rates have been rising for 40 years with almost half the country now obese. That is pretty good empirical evidence that Americans are unable to control their weight through behaviors that require self-discipline and so the only remaining solutions I can think of to the obesity epidemic is economic coercion (e.g., soda tax, sugar tax, higher medical premiums for the obese) or the development of a miracle pill.

I have found that the most effective way to control weight is intermittent fasting, which for me is limiting eating to the 8 hour period from 12-8PM (16 hours of fasting). Intermittent Fasting: What is it, and how does it work? | Johns Hopkins Medicine

2 Likes
#57

Excuse me but medications often needed for reasons involved in individual genetic make can stimulate appetite. It may be a secondary side effect but it is major.

There is no one factor.

My own problem was overeating and straying from a healthier diet. Exercise was also a problem. I used to over do it and get an unmanageable urge to eat.

Insisting on exercise to lose weight is false. We do not burn that much energy with exercise most of us. Some can exercise and manage their hunger around activity. Others are better off managing their caloric intake without exercise as I did for most of a year. The following year I went into the gym to lift weights and rebuild the muscle.

We can point to economics as a factor. Poorer workers make worse food choices. A matter perhaps perceptually of individual value in society. The bulk of the rise in obesity is among the lower middle class workers. It is not exclusive to them. With 60% of workers making under $40k per year many face a harsher reality.

1 Like
#58

This is very related to weight. More importantly the weight CAN be related to cancer. Alley died of colon cancer. The stats in this article on how common colon cancer is might shock many of us into getting colonoscopies. Dying of colon cancer is not necessary for most who catch it in time.

I turn 60 next year.

#59

Could the genetics have remained more or less the same while what people do has changed significantly?

Until the industrial revolution, all work - in the home and for employment - was accomplished with manual labor. Occasionally supplemented with animals, such as horses and oxen. That is how humans evolved, basically to be laborers. From hunting and gathering, to farming, and even skilled trades, almost all work was physical.

The industrial revolution provided significant increases in productivity, but the work remained mainly physical.

But in the US over the last half century, work has shifted from physical to mental. Services, rather than manufacturing, are the large part of todays economy. While some services involve physical activity, many don’t.

It strikes me that the increase in obesity lines up fairly well with the shift from manufacturing to services.

It would make sense, then, that our bodies - evolved to crave high energy food sources like fats and sugars - tend to store that excess energy as fat when we are not sufficiently active. And with manual labor falling as a source of daily exercise, it’s no wonder that the population is getting heavier on average.

—Peter <== who still believes that individual genetics plays a role in how individuals respond to the lack of manual labor as a form of daily exercise.

1 Like
#60

For me it was two things: 1. Intermittent fasting as outlined by Mark Mattson at John’s Hopkins, and 2. Eating primarily from the ten food groups as laid out by the Harvard Medical MIND diet.

#61

My weight crept up gradually over several years.
Causes might include: aging, reduced activity, too much snacking, food choices.
I had a bad hip that eventually got replaced.
I added 10 pounds when I had the hip replacement. The weight of the artificial hip, swelling, reduced mobility for a time contributed, but I settled in to a new higher weight for a couple of years.
Since then, I’ve gone from slightly obese to merely overweight.

For years we’ve belonged to a CSA, which means that we cook more, eat more veggies and less meat.
I’ve made it a point in the last few years to exercise most days for at least 1/2 hour. For me, 1/2 hour of exercise seems to be the break-even point where I maintain weight. If I do more than that, I usually manage to lose weight.

Perhaps one of the reasons for increased rate of obesity is how much we as a culture eat out and consume prepared foods. If one were to get a typical meal at most any restaurant every day, it would blow away the recommended calorie count for a normal person. The way that my wife and I get around this is to either split an entree or bring home leftovers.

Counterintuitively, I tend to lose weight when I go away on vacation. I generally do more walking, split more meals and snack less when on vacation.

Family gatherings and special occasions are more problematic, as I have less control over the food choices and are more likely to participate in more sedentary activities.

I’ve never counted calories, per se, though I try to make good choices.
I’ve done the intermittent fasting thing with a little bit of success.
For me, activity seems to be the key, though. It’s slow progress, but progress, nonetheless.

I could easily stand to lose another 20 lbs or so, but I would aim to do that over several years.

2 Likes
#62

jjaym,

I am looking to see how to organize myself around a few Christmas parties with family up in Boston. The bottom line I need to eat less. That is not easy for me in a crowd. I need to accept that is what I have decided to do.

#63

One really worthwhile tip I picked up during the general convo on avoiding too much holiday weight gain I mentioned upstream WRT my “diet” is to start your New Years assault on the excess fat now. New Year in December was a somewhat hokey theme in my SPIN and group strength classes and with personal training clients. In practice, we began immediately after Thanksgiving with a few “Pie Happens” classes.

One simple to implement strategy that will have immediate benefits done correctly is to start a modest exercise regimen/training programme (call it what you want…except “burning calories”) Done correctly being the operative word…as in anything but what scuppered your efforts in the past.

Commit to 1 or 2 actual 20 minute brisk-for-you walks around your neighbourhood…building from 5 minutes, if necessary) Any hunger pangs this might elicit can be ignored without you starving. For every 20 minutes you spend arguing the toss with total strangers on the internet, get up and walk around the house for 5 minutes…mebbee a few jumping jacks thrown in. If you have weights use 'em. If you don’t, buy 'em. Get a small rucksack and try rucking (it’s on Google) to add intensity to walks. Practice the dietary interventions you plan on using after Christmas right now.

Don’t want to do any of the above? Do it anyway…accept that there’ll be a period of refocusing your lenses.

You’re unlikely to expend serious energy over this lead in period but what you will accomplish is a bit of metabolic reversal under the hood that possibly won’t show on the scale, in the mirror or tapemeasure BUT will have kick started the process of, say, improving insulin sensitivity and inducing all those enzymes and transporter systems that have become sluggish whilst in fat and sedentary mode. The exercise denialists don’t tell you about this…or perhaps they don’t know.

Here you go. Got up early today (4.30 rather than 5) because my dog wanted a piddle. Decided to stay.up and check what folk were up to. I’m on my cell phone composing this…and walking round the same time. I’ve just checked and at just gone 6.15 Colorado time, I’ve accrued just over 3000 steps per my Garmin without even noticing.

Here’s my rucking ruck sack, BTW. You don’t need anything fancy. A few sturdy ziplock bags and some sand from Home Depot and you’ll have an adjustable tool like that Greek mythology dude Milo

20221208_063825
20221208_0638251920×2560 1010 KB

#64

‘Gone 6:15’ sounds British. I live in a small walkable town in the Shenandoah valley and take 3 to 6 mile walks almost daily for pleasure, And I do day hikes in the local mountains in the 10 to 15 mile range - that plus A diet heavy in whole grains, veggies, etc. are likely the source of my improved cardiovascular health- not vitamin d.

#65

I now live in the Front Range foothills of the Rockies. A lovely place to live…but for the altitude.

We moved here just over 6 years ago (very end of September) and by this time I was so poleaxed by the acclimation process I could barely exercise…a big transition from my schedule back in Boston. Start of the New Year. I bit the bullet and started a tentative walking/hiking prog (which is what you call 7-10% + grades even if paved) Actually did a modified Milo if Croton inadvertently using what was available at the time :smiling_face_with_three_hearts::wink:…

20221203_123537
20221203_1235371920×2560 301 KB

My little “bull” at her 6 year birthday party 3 days ago. Yes, at 70 grandma can still do a pick up and carry

1 Like
#66

And thunderstorms?

DB2

#67

We get some spectacular hail storms…hail the size of golf balls or bigger isn’t rare. Plus wind. Our first winter here, we have gusts of over 100mph and our neighbour’s dining room window actually blew into their room!

#68

If you ever move closer to sea level, you will be astounded how strong you feel at first! I spent a week at a resort near Gold Lake, CO (~7500 ft) in 1987 on a corporate team building thing. The first day was crazy … I walked from the bus to my cabin, perhaps 100 or 200 yards and was thoroughly winded. But after a day or two I got used to it and could even run short distances as required. A week later, when I got back to sea level, and went back to the gym, I felt extra strong for a few days!

#69

What strikes me is the large increase in the slope of the obesity curve just as the US embraced “supply side economics” and started the transition to Shiny-land.

Did all the boomers decide to let themselves go to pot at the same time, or was their a cultural embrace of unlimited levels of self-indulgence?

Steve

#70

Everything in moderation. One of my friends went to La Paz, Bolivia on a trip and took some time after his flight to go jogging - and ended up in the hospital.

Jeff

#71

We’re at just about 6,200 ft and even this really spanks me. Responses to altitude…and altitude training are ver individual, it seems. My daughter is also very sensitive to altitude changes, husband not so much and son in law barely at all.

For as much as I took a long time to become acclimated, trips to sea level do have me feeling like a performance machine. We’ve been back to England twice this Summer…tacking on a week or so onto scientific meetings. Our second visit coincided with the Royal Funeral so curtailed some of our jaunts. A few days in Dublin first for the meeting…casual sightseeing and a fair bit of walking. On to stay with the bro in law and we ended up filling the days with longer walks than usual. Couldn’t walk fast enough to even start puffing…so we ran a bit too. Quite a luxury to go fast and it be easy.

Barely 10 days away and we were huffing and puffing at DIA like you wouldn’t believe.

1 Like
#72

Not surprised. A poster from the H&N board is one of my pretend friends on Facebook, and he happened to do his residency training in Salt Lake City. Even that modest altitude can land susceptible people in the ER.

#73

As the altitude increases, normally our bodies will adjust in a couple weeks to the lesser O2, add additional red blood cells to carry more oxygen and we regain whatever level we were at. But dropping down lower, in only a few days, they are shed, unneeded…

My BIL used to live in Denver, as we visited, over a week or so we’d acclimatize, be OK. One of the stops traveling to/from vacation spots was Wheeler Peak, the RV campground is at 10,000 feet, then you try to climb to the 13K summit… First time we went from home, near sea level, got only a half mile on that trail and got sick, altitude sickness, gave up, back to the trailer. Other trips, where we’d been higher most of the time, it was fine, a but of a climb, but no sickness… Great Basin National Park… Lemoth Caves, Wheeler Peak, good pace to wander…

#74

You kind of make my point here. Americans now have an abundance of food choices and the reduced need to do physical labor. The result is an enormous increase in the number of people gaining so much weight that it significantly impacts the length and quality of their lives. That is empirical evidence that a lot of people lack the self-discipline to voluntarily make behavioral choices in their best interests.

You want to argue that there are genetic determinants that create a desire for fattening foods. That may be. But there are also genetic determinants for sexual urges, the impulse to hurt people you are angry with, or the temptation to steal stuff you want. Democratic ideals of personal freedom assume that people are capable of curbing these genetic tendencies to behave responsibly. If a lot of people can’t then society ends up having to coerce responsible behavior in some way.

If the rate of obesity continues to increase then society may have no choice but to be punitive in order to have an affordable health care system.

One interesting hypothesis is based on the introduction of high fructose corn syrup into the food supply in the 1970s. This made for a whole lot more cheap and sweet food, in particular cereals, juices, and sodas that may have influenced the eating behavior of a lot of children that has extended into their adult years. Lucky Charms, Sugar Pops, Frosted Flakes, Hi-C, A&W in the early years paved the way for Krispy Kremes and frapucinnos today. This sort of assumes that Baby Boomers are not much different from lab mice and have no rational control over their behavior.

2 Likes
#75

It seems that there has probably been an immense amount of research on this.
And that it would be easy to find data on obesity rates vs job/profession and other things.

Turns out there is if you just google it.
Here is one result. I don’t see a correlation between desk jobs and obesity at first glance so there must be more to it. Also, looking at just the top and bottom 5 doesn’t show the whole story

The Top 5 Fattest Professions

  1. Truck driving
  2. Transportation and material moving
  3. Protective services, including police officers and firefighters
  4. Cleaning and building services
  5. Healthcare services, including nurses and orderlies

The Top 5 Fittest Professions

  1. Health diagnosing occupations, including physicians, dentists, optometrists, and veterinarians
  2. Natural scientists and social scientists
  3. College and university professors
  4. Health assessment and treatment occupations, excluding registered nurses
  5. Other professional specialties, including librarians, social workers, clergy, writers, musicians, and athletes

Mike

2 Likes