Disclaimer I have never been obese or suffered obesity.
If it was easy no one would be fat. The whole body acceptance movement is a sham and always will be. We dont find obesity attractive and we do not want to be obese.
However for some reason 60% of us in the west are overweight.
And it is extremely hard to lose the kilos.
We are eating too much and we shame eachother for eating small portions or skipping meals.
But put simply, we have normalized large portions and eating five times per day.
And its super hard to cut the volume after a lifetime of large portions and eating ever two hours nonsense.
I sympathise with obesity sufferers and hope that the outcome of all of this is to normalise smaller portions and fewer meals again.
The population level statistics show that you're the exception and not the rule. Obviously if the side-effects are unpleasant, the alternative health implications must be even worse: Which they are.
This may sound cynical, but I believe it is also factual: in a capitalist society, generating revenue by making people sick (junk food), and then generating more revenue by curing them, and finally making a big pile by keeping them alive for a few more weeks, is the way it's "supposed" to work.
If everyone stayed healthy and then peacefully died one day in their sleep, I can't imagine how many $$$trillions that would remove from the US economy. (I know, there's an argument that healthy people would find other ways to generate revenue, but we have no path to realize that.)
Of course, a century of non-capitalist societies don't have a great track record either!
Thank goodness for all those countries that are neither the US nor puely non-capitalist (not that the US is an example of a pure capitalist society).
Just how blinkered is American Exceptionalism anyway? Surely you're knowingly playing up the false { US | not-US } dichotomy.
eg: "American junk food" as seen in the US is largely regulated away in Australia, food labelling is better, overall health and life expectancy is better, etc.
I don't know enough about other countries to comment on them in detail.
I do know that food multinationals are very active in almost all countries, and that obesity rates have skyrocketed in almost all countries, except for Japan, S Korea, and poor countries where people literally don't have enough to eat.
In Australia the obesity rate is >32%. That must be junk-food companies at work - I'm not aware of any other explanation.
> The information is freely available, now more than ever.
Given the progress of the threads here, do you have any recommendations for cutting through the noise and finding good scientific information on weight loss, healthy eating, lifestyle, etc?
I agree with you that all the information is out there, but there seems to be an enormous amount of resistance in the threads here to threads to even simple things like:
- Fresh fruits and vegetables
- Lean proteins
- Cut out processed foods
- Cut out smoking, rec. drugs, and booze
- Eat less in general
- Stay hydrated - water is the only drink you really need
- Find ways to move more, esp. for people with sedentary jobs / lifestyles
I don't have a silver bullet of health advice. Your list looks good.
The only things I'd change (what works for ME) is to reduce fruit (sugar). But if I could eat fruit all the time, I would.
And I eat as much fat as I want, definitely not just lean protein. Food should taste good!
And I practice intermittent and (sometimes) extended fasting. Dr. Jason Fung is an excellent resource.
You have to find what works for you. But for the majority who are overweight and obese while also on multiple meds and maybe also in pain and also self-medicated on booze and weed ... well, IMHO that's not really "working."
> The information is freely available, now more than ever
You have to believe it to find it.
Noise is everywhere, now more than ever. I think finding proper information is going to be exponentially harder.
A couple of days ago I was "fighting" on Reddit about something that is as clear as day, with proof and all, with people who were completely sure of the opposite (side note: this is when I deleted my Reddit accounts)
I just read that MTG and other Republican operatives are tweeting that hurricanes are created by the US government; now the MAGA want to kill meteorologists.
And despite all this, Trump has a 50-50 chance of winning the election.
You ever hear the saying "If you owe the bank $1000 dollars, that's your problem. If you owe the bank a million it's theirs"
This is a public health epidemic and no matter how much you scream "But I'm special" the rest of the world is going to fall apart around you. And yes, this issue is spreading to the entire world and not just the US.
I do it. Lots of people do it. The information is freely available, now more than ever.
From all I've read, Ozempic isn't a silver bullet, and has many side effects. It just helps people stave off the inevitable for a while.