Let's talk about fat.

[mkgal1]

I think this is another large part of the problem (the false "health claims" we read....hear):

They have been hoodwinked by the “health claims” that made them fat and sick including “low fat”, “diet”, “zero trans fats”, or “whole grain”.

Whole grain pop tarts? Zero trans fats in Cool Whip? It is 100 percent trans fat, but since the serving size is small, and the food lobby forced Congress permit them to label the “food” as having zero trans fat if it has less than 2 grams per serving, they can legally lie. The family didn’t know that chicken nuggets have 25 or more ingredients, and only one of them is chicken. It is a chicken like substance.~FED UP: Cook or Be Cooked - Dr. Mark Hyman

 

[Inkachu]

One thing I've learned over the past few years is to EDUCATE YOURSELF. Not with the stuff slapped all over Facebook by your cousin's BFF's uncle, but by reading actual, scientific resources. I now read every nutritional label on everything I buy. If I don't recognize an ingredient, I look it up. Then I read the pro's and con's of that ingredient. Then I decide if it's acceptable for me or my family to be consuming it. Forget what you think you know about fat and sugar and fiber and carbs; start your own investigation, from scratch. Avoid any "resource" that seems biased and slanted or overly emotional. Do your own thinking. Don't be afraid to rethink things you've held as solid beliefs all your life. The truth is that the food industry of today is not what it was for our parents or grandparents. The food itself isn't what it was. You may think "Well, my grandparents drank dairy milk and ate beef and sugar and they lived to be 100!" But is the milk, beef, and sugar of today's market the same product that it was 50 years ago? NO it is not.

Sadly, I think critical thinking is a lost way of life in this current generation. Our beliefs are shaped by TV and Facebook and "articles" online that could've been written by any Tom, Dick, or Harry.

Sorry. /rant

 

[Messy]

When talking about body fat and appearance, this thread reinforces the contemporary nonsense that gaining weight is expected and normal, and there's not much you can do about it.

Wrong. Becoming a whale is normal in today's western (specifically, American) culture. It is unique to the last 50 years. Eating food is tasty, and doing stuff is hard, and that's pretty much all there is too it.

There's an extremely simple way to test this theory. Look at people in other countries without tons of uber-calorie food and SUV's everywhere. Or better yet, look at footage from American before 1950. Almost nobody was heavy. The idea that it's inevitable is complete nonsense and just a way to dismiss abuse of the physical body God has given you.

Thyroid and other issues account for almost nobody who is heavy. The fact that this would even be raised as a real argument, shows how far we are willing to go to justify self-abuse and the immediate gratification of tasty things and being sedentary.

In Holland there's a lot of junk food too, but people are not so overweight as in the States and Canada. Very few are. I went to the States and Canada and you couldn't get normal food. We just eat bread with cheese or something, there you could only get things like doughnuts, big meals, a vase instead of a glass and free refill. We went out with a couple for lunch and we said: Do you know a place where we can eat some bread with cheese? He said joking: They eat that in prison here. We went to a couple in Canada that migrated years ago from Holland and they were not overweight, they were still used to those eating habits.

 

[Inkachu]

Bread with cheese is my kind of meal The thing is, though, you don't have to eat ANY fast food here in the U.S. to be overweight. I never eat fast food, but I'm still struggling to lose weight. Don't forget that we are the rulers of the snack industry here. Chips, candy, sodas, crackers, cookies. Even foods you think of as normal and healthy are so highly processed and full of junk that the nutritional benefits are almost cancelled out. I'm tellin ya... read your labels. Read them! You might be shocked at the ingredients you don't recognize and can't pronounce, but you're dumping them into your body for years on end.

 

[Messy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfDXe10BT0

 

[akmom]

To be fair, I think *all* the major fast food restaurants have added decent meals to their menus. I always grab a salad for lunch when I'm at work and don't have time to go home and cook. Every single one of them offers a decent healthy salad with a healthy dressing option (like balsamic vinegar) and these nifty lidded containers that allow you to "shake" the dressing all over so you can use less.

 

[ValleyGal]

If I'm going to consume calories in a place like McDonalds, I would rather have a cheeseburger than the chicken teriyaki salad - they both have the same amount of calories, and I make salads all the time at home. But I never make cheeseburgers.

 

[Heinzzz]

youtube.com/watch?v=zAfDXe10BT0

 

[bhsmte]

I think this is another large part of the problem (the false "health claims" we read....hear):

If you walk into a book store, there is more garbage in the diet/lose weight section, then you will find in the fantasy section of that same store.

Everyone is seeking the "magical" diet to make them thin and the "magical" exercise routine.

There is no magic to it, we know the physiology of how our bodies operate, but those facts often don't sell books.

 

[bhsmte]

Bread with cheese is my kind of meal The thing is, though, you don't have to eat ANY fast food here in the U.S. to be overweight. I never eat fast food, but I'm still struggling to lose weight. Don't forget that we are the rulers of the snack industry here. Chips, candy, sodas, crackers, cookies. Even foods you think of as normal and healthy are so highly processed and full of junk that the nutritional benefits are almost cancelled out. I'm tellin ya... read your labels. Read them! You might be shocked at the ingredients you don't recognize and can't pronounce, but you're dumping them into your body for years on end.

No, you don't have to eat fast food to be overweight. This is all you need to do; consume more calories than you expend and if you do that enough, you will be overweight.

Granted, your body does store excess calories as fat differently, depending on whether it is in the form of; fat, carbohydrates or protein. When too much fat is consumed, there is no transfer process necessary to store excess consumed fat and it is easily stored in the adipose tissue. When one consumes an excess of protein, about 12-15% of the excess is burned off in the process, to store it as fat. With carbohydrates, about 30% of the excess is burned off in the process to store carbohydrates as fat.

 

[ValleyGal]

bhsmte, I'm not convinced we really know how our bodies work, either. It's really recent (the last year or two, to my knowledge), that pharm companies are finally recognizing how very differently men and women metabolize drugs. So it makes sense that men and women also metabolize food and exercise differently as well. So we might have a basic understanding, we don't really have a full understanding of physiology - especially as it pertains to all the additives, preservatives and other junk our foods typically have now.

The other day on FB, someone posted this

WHOA!! sorry for the size....it won't let me re-size.

 

[bhsmte]

bhsmte, I'm not convinced we really know how our bodies work, either. It's really recent (the last year or two, to my knowledge), that pharm companies are finally recognizing how very differently men and women metabolize drugs. So it makes sense that men and women also metabolize food and exercise differently as well. So we might have a basic understanding, we don't really have a full understanding of physiology - especially as it pertains to all the additives, preservatives and other junk our foods typically have now.

The other day on FB, someone posted this

WHOA!! sorry for the size....it won't let me re-size.

We are always learning more, no question and that will never stop. But, we do know quite a bit about the physiology of the human body in regards to how we metabolize food. Massive amounts of studies have been done on the same and determining how our bodies react to certain substances, is pretty straight forward.

The other issue that I stress is this, there is no question, that physically fit individuals, metabolize food and energy stores quite differently than sedentary people, and IMO, is the driving force behind obesity.

 

[akmom]

If I'm going to consume calories in a place like McDonalds, I would rather have a cheeseburger than the chicken teriyaki salad - they both have the same amount of calories, and I make salads all the time at home.

Yeah, I guess the calories are similar (290 for salad, 300 for cheeseburger). But think about what you're getting. I don't think any one is full from one cheeseburger. If you get the cheeseburger meal, you're getting two cheeseburgers, fries and a drink. That's more like 800 calories. Whereas the chicken salad is very filling. I typically eat 1/4 of the chicken they pile on there. You feel full from all the fibrous veggies and black beans. So you're very likely only getting 250 calories total (IMO). And for what it is (fast food), that's not bad!

 

[bhsmte]

Yeah, I guess the calories are similar (290 for salad, 300 for cheeseburger). But think about what you're getting. I don't think any one is full from one cheeseburger. If you get the cheeseburger meal, you're getting two cheeseburgers, fries and a drink. That's more like 800 calories. Whereas the chicken salad is very filling. I typically eat 1/4 of the chicken they pile on there. You feel full from all the fibrous veggies and black beans. So you're very likely only getting 250 calories total (IMO). And for what it is (fast food), that's not bad!

I'm not advocating anyone to eat more fat, but consuming fat gives you a feeling of being full, much more so than non-fat food. Fat also stays in your stomach for much longer than non-fat foods and in some, diminishes appetite for a longer period of time.

 

[Hetta]

It's really recent (the last year or two, to my knowledge), that pharm companies are finally recognizing how very differently men and women metabolize drugs.

And you are also aware that labs have not been testing drugs on female cells, correct? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/h...in-early-studies.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

Off topic but still valid.

 

[Messy]

I'm not advocating anyone to eat more fat, but consuming fat gives you a feeling of being full, much more so than non-fat food. Fat also stays in your stomach for much longer than non-fat foods and in some, diminishes appetite for a longer period of time.

When I was younger I was on a 1000 calorie diet, it didn't work at all. Everything without fat, an egg I would do with a paper to get rid of the fat. When I stopped dieting and started to eat fries and cola with Sugar and fat cheese, I was full and not so obsessed with food anymore and I lost weight and never had to diet again. My mother ate almost nothing for a period, only a bit of salad and maybe one or two slices of bread and she became even fatter.
The dietist said she had to eat normal. Then she lost weight. My dad just quit eating pies and candy and within a month or two he lost a few pounds.

 

[bhsmte]

When I was younger I was on a 1000 calorie diet, it didn't work at all. Everything without fat, an egg I would do with a paper to get rid of the fat. When I stopped dieting and started to eat fries and cola with Sugar and fat cheese, I was full and not so obsessed with food anymore and I lost weight and never had to diet again. My mother ate almost nothing for a period, only a bit of salad and maybe one or two slices of bread and she became even fatter.
The dietist said she had to eat normal. Then she lost weight. My dad just quit eating pies and candy and within a month or two he lost a few pounds.

Yep.

Go on a heavily restricted caloric intake and the body goes in survival mode; slows down metabolism and will store fat as a priority, so it has long term fuel stores to deal with the low caloric intake.

Our bodies are adaptive machines.

 

[Inkachu]

My husband eats two or three times what I do, he eats richer, saltier foods than I do, and still loses more weight. And he is not active. I exercise daily and he doesn't.

Men and women are absolutely different in terms of metabolism, weight loss, etc.

 

[bhsmte]

My husband eats two or three times what I do, he eats richer, saltier foods than I do, and still loses more weight. And he is not active. I exercise daily and he doesn't.

Men and women are absolutely different in terms of metabolism, weight loss, etc.

Men do have higher metabolisms as a general rule, because they have greater lean tissue that needs to be maintained.

 

[akmom]

My husband eats two or three times what I do, he eats richer, saltier foods than I do, and still loses more weight. And he is not active. I exercise daily and he doesn't.

Yeah, men are pains like that.