Exercise 'not key to obesity fight'

ianf wrote:Do people here really go to the doctors for dietary advice? As that is some serious waste of resources if so, Jesus.

The average person doesn't really know what a "carb" or a "sugar" is, let alone things like what proportion of which kinds of fat they should be eating. I'm afraid telling them to just Google it is likely to result in them trying all sorts of crazy 'Atkins diet' style nonsense.

I understand you're a fitness nerd and know it all already, but I hope you can see it doesn't mean other people are stupid if they take fifteen minutes out to ask a health professional about one of the most important health-related choices they can make. It is actually a wise thing for them to do.

I think something’s going wrong with the education system if people don’t know how to eat healthily

I agree but I'm not sure I would want to argue that swathes of people should be cut off from the information should they want it because they 'should' know it already.

Tomous wrote:I think something’s going wrong with the education system if people don’t know how to eat healthily

We just never touched it at school: it was a selective grammar so common sense was of a reasonable standard, but still, we were generally quite competitive and sporty, so even if they couched healthy eating against that backdrop, I think it would have worked. Ie called it sports nutrition, or something.

Back to the OP, the point of the story clearly isn't 'don't exercise', no matter how it was presented. The point was that, in a world full of strawberry floating morons, the 'winnable battle' is getting them to eat healthily, as getting them off their fat arses to do some exercise is clearly not a winnable battle. The path of least resistance to reduce national obesity is reducing the crap people eat.

I think it could/should be part of the biology curriculum.

ProPoser wrote:

Tomous wrote:I think something’s going wrong with the education system if people don’t know how to eat healthily

We just never touched it at school: it was a selective grammar so common sense was of a reasonable standard, but still, we were generally quite competitive and sporty, so even if they couched healthy eating against that backdrop, I think it would have worked. Ie called it sports nutrition, or something.

Back to the OP, the point of the story clearly isn't 'don't exercise', no matter how it was presented. The point was that, in a world full of strawberry floating morons, the 'winnable battle' is getting them to eat healthily, as getting them off their fat arses to do some exercise is clearly not a winnable battle. The path of least resistance to reduce national obesity is reducing the crap people eat.

I think it could/should be part of the biology curriculum.

Perhaps more 'in a world of plenty, eat less and eat better'?

Mind you, when we have stuff like this:



posing as breakfast cereal, what chance does our nation of increasingly obese kids have..?

Cal wrote:Perhaps more 'in a world of plenty, eat less and eat better'?

Mind you, when we have stuff like this:



posing as breakfast cereal, what chance does our nation of increasingly obese kids have..?

Yeah, that's fair. Just because you can eat it, doesn't mean you should.

Those cereals, though, are ridiculous. And I bet every parent who gives those to their kids has a well-worn excuse for doing so.

"At least they're eating something..." or words to that effect. I watched that thing about the obese kids a few weeks back and the parents were basically negligent. Letting themselves be bossed by their kids because they can't say no to them, and giving them double chocolate cereals (FFS!) is easier than using your brain for two minutes to negotiate a difficult conversation.

I never had cereal as a child, and as a member of my family developed type 2 diabetes I cut down on the amount of sugar I eat. It's amazing how your taste buds adjust, now tea with sugar in tastes disgusting to me, horrifically sweet. My go to workday breakfast is now weetabix with milk, and I can taste the sweetness of the milk with the biscuit even though it's quite a healthy cereal all things considered.

I was lacking a lot of energy this afternoon (I wasn't kidding about having the gooseberry fools) so I've just had a can of full-fat coke for the first time in ages. My mouth feels so strawberry floating furry

Winckle wrote:I never had cereal as a child, and as a member of my family developed type 2 diabetes I cut down on the amount of sugar I eat. It's amazing how your taste buds adjust, now tea with sugar in tastes disgusting to me, horrifically sweet. My go to workday breakfast is now weetabix with milk, and I can taste the sweetness of the milk with the biscuit even though it's quite a healthy cereal all things considered.

I use artificial sweetener on my cereal. Yeah - I know, everyone says aspartame gives you cancer or something, but I've been using artificial sweetener for years (I've been drinking Pepsi Max for decades) with no discernible side effects.

Cal wrote:

Winckle wrote:I never had cereal as a child, and as a member of my family developed type 2 diabetes I cut down on the amount of sugar I eat. It's amazing how your taste buds adjust, now tea with sugar in tastes disgusting to me, horrifically sweet. My go to workday breakfast is now weetabix with milk, and I can taste the sweetness of the milk with the biscuit even though it's quite a healthy cereal all things considered.

I use artificial sweetener on my cereal. Yeah - I know, everyone says aspartame gives you cancer or something, but I've been using artificial sweetener for years (I've been drinking Pepsi Max for decades) with no discernible side effects.

People say aspartame gives you cancer based on an old email hoax. There's never been a link found between aspartame and cancer.

I dont consume it because it tastes like gooseberry fool

Give me the real deal, baby

ProPoser wrote:I was lacking a lot of energy this afternoon (I wasn't kidding about having the gooseberry fools) so I've just had a can of full-fat coke for the first time in ages. My mouth feels so strawberry floating furry

I did the exact same thing a month ago and strawberry float that tasted weird,I can't really drink normal coke anyway as it also makes my teeth feel weird. When i went to Brazil a couple of months ago it was actually a really big challenge to find any sort of drink that didn't have tons of sugar in it, even the bloody fizzy water had sugar in it which i didn't know until i had bought the damn thing and looked on the bottle.

There is a lot of talk about obesity here but in the area of Brazil i went to near Recife the amount of overly fat overweight people was quite surprising.

Yeah that's fair enough Karl I had thought people should know at least the basics already/ google it but I supposed that leads to a potentially flawed outcome.

Agree about tastebuds adapting too, used to eat chocolate daily and now after years off I can't stand the stuff, one block at most and even then I'm feeling a bit gooseberry fool.

Thanks to not being able to drink alcohol I've been caining the coke when out and I dunno how people drink that daily, leaves a horrific feeling in the mouth and on your teeth.

Karl wrote:I'm not sure if you're serious or not but please don't make any dietary changes based on non-advice from an internet forum.

If you're for-real about changing your diet, either talk to a doctor or at least have a browse of a reputable website like the NHS. Basically you want to be aiming for a balance - lots of vegetables, a fair amount of carbs and fruit, some meat, and a little bit of fat.

Posting on forums/threads where you have multiple people who are knowledgeable about such things (as gamerforever has started doing in the fitness thread) is going to get you much better advice tailored to your own personal goals/situation than browsing something like the NHS website and probably better than most regular doctors whose best contribution would be to refer you to a nutritionist.

The premise of this thread is not news, if you eat less calories than your body uses you will lose weight and vice versa, it isn't something that's just been discovered.

What also needs to be considered though is that weight in its self is not a great measure of general wellbeing. For example you can be classed as overweight on the BMI scale yet be an elite athlete, because obesity measured by BMI is based on weight in relation to height, regardless if that weight is a massive beer gut with no muscle or someone with 5% body fat who is stacked with muscle. It seems to me that the message Cal is trying to portray is that the exercise factor and body composition are irrelevant as long as you just focus on your diet. That view is too simplistic.

The fact remains that most people, overweight or otherwise, do not exercise nearly enough. I have never been overweight as such but I have noticed a massive improvement to my general fitness after taking up regular exercise. Also, I have noticed that I almost never get sick any more. Having a more robust body seems to make it far easier to recover from injuries and shrug off infections.

Even if exercise is not key to fighting obesity everyone, including obese people, should exercise.

Hawky wrote:Posting on forums/threads where you have multiple people who are knowledgeable about such things (as gamerforever has started doing in the fitness thread) is going to get you much better advice tailored to your own personal goals/situation than browsing something like the NHS website and probably better than most regular doctors whose best contribution would be to refer you to a nutritionist.

I'm genuinely impressed that GRcade's Fitness Thread is giving out advice "better than most doctors" and I'm not trying to knock the community you guys have built here. I'm pleased you're there and willing to be a resource. But because of the unaccountable nature of advice on the internet - and on a health issue the potential for giving bad advice even once ever is still once too many - my advice to chaps who are clearly a bit clueless is always "speak to someone with a qualification first." It wasn't a personal insult and I hope you can see why I say it: it's the same advice I regularly give to people in the Depression Thread and yet I think that's an extremely knowledgeable base of people!

Yeh I can appreciate that. I think if you can get a referral from a doctor you are going to get proper advice from whoever they refer you to, but the GPs themselves in general won't have the right level of knowledge.

I know more about nutrition for lifting and exercise than a GP does.