[davidn20]

"United States federal law does not protect people against obesity discrimination"

If we are going to talk about laws for obesity discrimination. Isn't it better to discuss height or attractiveness discrimination first? We know those things can't be change by lifestyle at all.

Weight and obesity is a hard topic to discuss concretely because people are individuals. It's like sleep, some people can operate on 3 hours of sleep, while others need 9. However, by in large, it's calories in vs calories out.

[bombcar]

If we can find those who do not operate under calories in vs calories out we should either arrest them for breaking the laws of thermodynamics or enlist them as a power source somehow.

As a culture we share blame in making it way to damn easy to eat billions of calories. Coca Cola has probably done more health damage that Big Tobacco.

As he drinks his Diet Coke he posts this, c’est la vie.

[schnitzelstoat]

Yeah, people's metabolism can be really different though.

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease and prior to getting medication I had been gaining weight.

Although that's an actual medical condition so I guess it's an extreme case.

[Volundr]

I can definitely say from personal experience that metabolism plays a big factor. Until about 25 I never really struggled with weight. Sure I packed on the pounds when I started college (went from being on the swim team and working at Wendy's, so highly active, to doing nothing for exercise and working as a security guard watching cameras), but once I realized what was happening and applied a little discipline it came off easily and stayed off.

Then, well, something happened with my thyroid. Best guess is some kind of infection. I was already at a healthy weight, but lost 20 pounds over a few months. Tests showed my thyroid was producing WAY too much hormone and we were about to oblate it and put me on thyroid replacement hormone when the levels returned to normal on their own. Ever since then however I've struggled with my weight despite eating healthier than ever before. Unfortunately I never had cause to have my thyroid checked before this incident, so I have no way of knowing how my "normal" levels pre-infection compare to my new "normal" levels post infection.

Yes calories in vs calories out may be the literal physics of the situation, but the details of that equation can be very different for different people.

[fnordpiglet]

Did you read the article?

[ioslipstream]

Obesity is someone's fault. If it weren't, then we would always have had the same obesity rate. The fact that the obesity rate is rising, or has risen in the last 40 years is evidence that something somewhere happened and someone is at fault.

We can likely blame lobbyists for the tragedy that we'll never figure it out because of special interest money in keeping the "someone/something" in the dark.

[roenxi]

Obesity has a cause, and people have a responsibility to manage their own health.

But does it really make sense to say obesity is someone's 'fault'? Choices have consequences, but fault requires unambiguous harm.

[orwin]

I disagree, or rather i think you're too absolute. My cousin was obese at 8 (after a car accident this parents started to eat a lot, and as the youngest he followed). He had prediabetes at 12 and that killed his hormonal balance. He now cannot be anything else than obese, even with calorie restrictions.

[fnordpiglet]

Your cousin must not have read as much Ayn Rand as OP.

[bombcar]

Yes, and I'm worried that they burned mouse poop but didn't burn any mouse urine. From what I understand, what you piss is more dependent on calories than what you poop.

And in general, society's attempt to make things "no fault" seem to always result in more of whatever it is, not less.

Would I love to blame my body fat on anything else? Sure! But in the end it's down to me. Maybe it's harder for me or easier for me, but it's still me.

[lsaferite]

Did we read the same article? They expressly called out that the mice ate the same amount of calories, pooped the same amount of calories, and had the same levels of activity.

[brohee]

Yes, and with 10-15% reduction in food intake the fat mouse lost weight.

The fact that we do not all handle food intake in the same way doesn't mean it's not a lifestyle issue, not everyone has to eat the same. Some people are more efficient, good for them, now they can eat less. And I say that as a fatty myself (from overeating, no magic here).

[leereeves]

> Some people are more efficient, good for them, now they can eat less.

Let's not try to frame that is if it were a good thing. In parts of the world that are overflowing with so much delicious food, almost everyone would like to be able to eat more of it without getting fat. The inefficient people are the fortunate ones.

[nradov]

Fortunate how? I would prefer to have a more efficient digestive system so that I didn't have to eat so much.

[mmastrac]

I'd love that if it came with a corresponding decrease in appetite, but alas.

[feet]

Just because we like something doesn't mean we should do it

I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to use cocaine every day

[leereeves]

> I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to use cocaine every day

There are plenty of people who do use cocaine regularly, and a lot of them are celebrities.

[feet]

And how many people have died due to the cardiotoxicity?

I think you may have missed the point I was making. Just because people like something doesn't mean it is beneficial or it should be done regularly

[spaetzleesser]

"However, by in large, it's calories in vs calories out."

It's way more complex. The quality of the calories count and if you move/exercise a lot you can eat almost any amount without gaining weight. Obesity is a consequence of a sedentary lifestyle and super processed food that's designed to be addictive and not nutritious.

[davidguetta]

Weight loss IS calories in out and that includes ecercice..

What you are talking about is hunger management, which is different, but yes also important on long term than just counting

[dbspin]

>by in large, it's calories in vs calories out.

It's absolutely not... I have zero sympathy for the 'fat pride', political fatness etc side of body positivity. But I can confirm both through personal experience and research that your perspective is uselessly reductive. Endocrine disruption, sleep schedule, glycemic index and pharmaceutical drugs can all enormously impact on weight gain and retention. Moreover the 'calories in, calories out hypothesis' (first outlined in this paper from the 1950's - https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/6/5/542/47299...), has been debunked (see this recent met-analysis - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4516704/). Weight gain / loss in humans is a dynamic system, where the body will preconsciously adjust activity preferences and metabolic activity to maintain weight homeostasis. There are also enormous interindividual differencies in how the body responds to calorie load - related to genetic and gut microflora differences - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/gut-bacteria-and-weight... (not a link to a study directly, but links to dozens of stories confirming impact of gut bacteria on weight and overall health). Additionally, we've seen cross species weight gain, including in species that exist outside of human society, indicating that there are environmental factors for cross cultural weight gain beyond worse diets and more sedentary life styles - https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/everything-getting....

[adamdusty]

Your brain may subconsciously adjust your activity as a result of dieting, but that doesn't change the fact that it is physically impossible for your body to store energy you didn't consume.

[tsol]

Your body can speed up or slow down processes to conserve energy. For example, it's much easier to lose weight when you are heavier versus if you are skinny because your body is quicker to slow metabolism. And that is just one factor. Gut microbiome is another.

[adamdusty]

Sure your body could put itself into a coma and conserve all possible energy, and it would still be physically impossible for it to store energy you did not consume.

Your body will never go under such heavy energy conservation that you cannot lose weight, and it doesn't have enough control to do that anyway. At best your body can attempt to slow down your physical activity and slow down digestion for efficiency. Yes as you diet your metabolic rate will decrease, and even if it were to decrease an impossible amount like 50+% you would still be able lose weight by comsuming less energy.

[nailer]

Yes people have different bodies - some slimmer, some less so. No, that doesn't explain why people are suddenly morbidly obese.

[dafneee]

>It's absolutely not

So why do we never find obese people among starving conditions (famines, concentrations camps, etc)

[pjc50]

Because they're starving and their calories are externally constrained. So what?

[guerrilla]

Because it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. You can't store fat if you don't get enough calories, but many people don't store fat at the same rate others do for the same overage.

[cratermoon]

"Here it is demonstrated, however, that weight stability coexists with a persistent energy imbalance" ^1

1 Serious analytical inconsistencies challenge the validity of the energy balance theory https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402...

[caturopath]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookism

[ChadNauseam]

You say calories in calories out, but it’s not true. A rock has zero calories, but eat a rock that’s too big to pass through your digestive tract and you’ll gain one rock-worth of weight (followed by death).

That’s why I prefer a much more simple and natural model: mass-in vs mass-out.

[pjc50]

Kind of difficult to measure exhalation mass without special equipment. And that's how weight must be lost: you have to oxidise the carbon in it and breathe it out.

[dafneee]

E=mc^2

Calorie-in vs calorie-out, or mass-in vs mass-out is really the same thing in the end.

[fknorangesite]

TIL I am a nuclear reactor.