PBS show on Obesity


#61

I think (hope) that’s just a vocal minority, I don’t think most people are stupid enough to actually want the government running the healthcare system. The people that use the VA know better! The people on Medicare know better! People from way up north see the Canadians flying over the border to pay out of pocket for health care here vs their “free” healthcare that get after their 6mo wait.

I think it’s the same crowd that’s behind all this student loan crap, just entitled morons that can’t do 3rd grade math then spout off about all the countries with “free” healthcare, yet lose twice as much out of their paychecks, pay 4x as much in taxes every time they buy anything… but “free”. LOL!

Image that system in place when the first Vegan becomes President? HAH! “Meat eaters, the biggest thread to national security”.


(Edith) #62

My only knowledge of this is from watching “My 600 Pound Life.” On that show, the patients have to change their diets and lose a fair bit of weight before they can have the surgery. I wonder how many people do just that to qualify for the surgery (play the game, so to speak) and then just go back to their old ways afterwards? It may not be the doctors’ faults at all, but the lure of the processed food and the mindset that now they’ve had the surgery, they can just eat what they want, but in smaller quantities.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #63

Just a reminder to everyone that this is not a political forum. Our focus is and must be strictly on the ketogenic diet and how to eat that way. There are plenty of other sites on the Internet where politics can be discussed.


(Marianne) #64

I’ve watched that show as well and it is really disturbing. Yes, the doctor makes them change their diets and get below 500 (I think that is the threshold for having surgery), but they are reduced to less than 1,000 calories a day, I believe.

I would hazard to say that almost all of them “diet” only to get down to a weight that is “safe” enough to have the surgery. I think most everyone plans on returning to their favorite foods, but just not in large quantity. Although processed food isn’t really “food,” it is delicious, relatively inexpensive and highly addictive.


#65

hey cut us some slack here ya know :wink: HAHA


#66

agreed which is why they are testing their mental capacity before surgery options.

again so many at this weight have mental issues not any of us can ever understand.

I see the ‘truth’ in it.

Even that one Dr Now guy said that if they can’t change eating and want this and lose alot of lbs cause they are so heavy and show that they even attempted to change their eating??? he knows it is more psycho issues happening vs. one just is ‘overweight a bit’ and wants to live life well not giving up yummy foods and more.

I think there is that line. Mental vs. physical. As well as we ALL know sugar and body are wanting and drawing and malnourished eating this way,. simple change of ‘eating right’ doesn’t cut it for some people in that to this extreme, there is some mental baggage that trumps it all ya know. Way outta my league when it boils down to it all when we see issues like this on people I guess.

with people like this…morbid over like 400 to 600 lbs over is extreme. we know there are mental blocks and issues here but for someone 5-60 lbs over it is who we are in this day and age on this planet and yummy food YET MANY OF us can to realization, where the others in that big morbid category can’t.

so if they can’t hit what he says to change weight loss, they go pretty quick into counseling and that counseling I truly think has helped many make it, but darn, dieting and food is just that and many fall back cause I don’t think surgery is a ‘real life well being’ life changer cause even the Drs say ‘it is just a tool’ --------------hey I thought to get a lap band but in my brain, hell no cause I wanted to eat for health and lose lbs and ‘be normal’ somehow thru this from a natural food point of view.

plus I hate drs at all costs HAHA

most do undo the surgery. I think it is a massive mental game of roullette that is just horrifying. I kinda been on that game also til I wiggled my azz out of it ya know in a small way to suit me. I think many can’t ‘find that way out’

truly saddening but it is our walks and our paths and our journey so?

just regular ol’ chat on it ya know…just spewing how I see some of it and how it has to be torture for many above what I went thru to change in a way. Something I don’t get yet I know it has to be out there. That mental issue that will trump all of our wants for change.


(Susan) #67

If every American ate their recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables, there would be a severe produce shortage in the United States. People will never be convinced that keto is healthy unless and until the FDA, USDA, AHA, ADA, ACS endorse it. But those agencies will never endorse keto because the profits of big food producers would be so severely impacted if a large segment of the population ate like we do. I look forward to the day when laboratory grown meat is widely available because believe it or not, cow farts really do significantly contribute to greenhouse gases.

PBS Funding (according to Wikipedia):


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #68

Peter Ballerstedt has some interesting figures on the carbon footprint of agriculture. The health care industry actually has a larger footprint, believe it or not. Not only that, but much of the carbon footprint of U.S. agriculture is the result of extractive practices, involving chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, which are all made from fossil fuels, not to mention all the fuel used in running farm machinery.

Cows don’t actually fart; the problem, if it is a problem, is the methane in their burps, produced by bacteria in their rumen. But the ecosystem evolved to deal with that methane, and ruminants raised on grasslands actually contribute to a system that has a net negative carbon footprint. In other words, a properly managed grassland actually sequesters carbon. I’ve heard it asserted that properly grazing animals on the Great Plains of North America would actually remove all the excess of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Don’t know as I trust that figure completely, but the figures I have looked at suggest that that assertion might well be true.

But the key is animals properly grazed on the grasslands, where they evolved together with the grasses. The problem with most meat production in the U.S., is the factory farming system, where animals are kept in inhumane conditions in feed lots. Not only that, but grain is not actually all that healthy for the animals, and their methane production is greater. If we dealt with the factory farming system, that alone would be a very good thing, both for the animals and for the ecosystem. Moreover, farmers who engage in regenerative practices, especially regenerative grazing techniques, find that their use of fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides drops to nothing, and their need for farm machinery is minimal. So the net contribution of ruminant agriculture can be highly beneficial for the ecosystem, especially since ruminants can be grazed on land that cannot be used to grow crops. Lab grown meat, while attractive in theory, is highly resource-intensive and has a high carbon footprint. Not to mention that the nutrient profile of ruminants raised on healthy grasses grown in healthy soil is very impressive.


#69

So no more mentioning that the FDA and USDA dietary guidelines are BS? That statins are bad and pushed because of lobbyists greasing the docs pockets?

C’mon man, you know that wasn’t a real policitcal rant. If it was, it’d still be going now. I got a long list :grin:


#70

Do we eat through our eyes? I used to watch nutrition documentaries with an eagerness to learn.

Now I look at the screens in my life and wonder what I am being fed.


(Kirk Wolak) #71

A good friend of mine asked if I had the C word…

People don’t get it. We have no concept. I was literally at my best weight, and still 20% body fat.
WOW…


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #72

I have started to collect photographs of what people looked like before the advent of the dietary guidelines. Today, those people would be called emaciated. Back then, it was just what normal looked like.

I remember watching Sophia Loren in Houseboat when I was a kid and thinking how zaftig she looked—voluptuous, but definitely very well-padded. I happened to come across some photos of her from that time, stills from the movie and other publicity shots, and by today’s standards, she was actually on the thin side. That tells you how much the dietary guidelines have warped things.


#73

so true.
SO MUCH now warped but some of us are finding our way back to real nature and reality of life on this planet. Not alot of us, but some LOL
This almost is the time to put our heads in the sand and not look up but that isn’t the way forward either is it? ugh


(GINA ) #74

I have watched that 600 lb show and always wondered about why everyone, no matter their starting weight, had to lose 50 lbs (or 75 or whatever it was, I don’t remember). So a person on this week’s show might weigh 100 lbs less already than the person on last week’s show, but they were still told to lose X amount. It is partly to see if they will make the changes needed, but a big reason is the strict diet shrinks the liver and takes pressure off the internal organs and literally gives the surgeon more room to work. I thought that was interesting.


#75

absolutely it is medical health testing and per person factors on whether surgery will be safe. Not a doubt about that per individual. Some come into it with massive health and dire issues to not make it thru surgery and must have weight loss drop to make surgery safe, but also it is twofold in that the Dr must see the patient is there, with them, to make changes, which will then be massively invasive to an ol’ normal lifestyle of uncontrolled eating and emotional issues/life issues they had.

SO MUCH goes into it and why they do what they do in this bariatric walk to surgery.

All Drs say it is just a tool. So…but a tool is of no value if you go under the knife and don’t come out.


#76

While it is not something I would consider, and the only person I knew who had surgery, I lost touch with for other reasons, so no personal experience, I think a lot of this is the body’s need for homeostasis. As much as we want to say these people were not candidates, it really may simply be that our bodies want to be a certain weight and unless you make radical changes in aspects of your life, which most people do not have the time or energy or wisdom to do, eventually you will revert because it is not simply calories in and calories out, whatever the source of those calories.

I found this true with Keto, mediterranean, slow carb, gluten free and other similar diets as well. While I do not lose weight easily and I get to certain point and it stops, what I have found is that each time I lose a significant amount of weight, I gain it back. Not immediately but after a few years. For example in 1995 I lost about 20 lbs doing mediterranean (hoping to lose 40 but looked good with the weight loss), gained it back in 1997 and eating that way did not help. In 2009 went gluten free and slow carb. Lost about 50lbs, gained 40 back in 2013. In 2017 lost 52 lbs with low carb and IF, gained back 40 over the pandemic (and it was not the pandemic because I always worked at home).
Each time I would get to a low point where I was still overweight but not obese and my BMI even with weight loss was well over 25, could not move below it and then would gradually gain back the weight. The diet would not work, exercise would not work. My body wanted to be a certain weight. Over the summer I have lost about 15 lbs from my Pandemic high with IF and avoiding carbs but I am still 34 lbs over what I weighed at the end of 2017 and over 30 BMI


(Robin) #77

Remember when Ethel was the “chunky” friend on Lucy? I’d kill for her waist.
And Lucy was a stick. No wonder we got warped expectations.


#78

IDK about the body wanting a specific weight but mine surely wants its usual amount of food for satiation and because I eat about that much all the time (sometimes more, even for longer but my metabolism can quicken that much), I stall. And there was my mystical stress gain, WHY I never went back to my usual weight afterwards, no idea but I didn’t. I keep my new weight very well, no matter my woe or whatever, it never changes. (It would if I ate less, sure, I am simple like that.)

There are way more complicated cases I am aware, hormones and curious metabolism changes can mess up things in interesting ways but probably most of the time the gaining back happens due to eating too much again. It’s definitely true in my family.


#79

The opposite seems to be happening for Labradors. Billie is an optimum low-carb canine, but at the beach she gets called, “chonky”.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #80

I’m collecting photographs of people from before the dietary guidelines were proposed. It’s fascinating to see how skinny most people were. That was just the norm. And it wasn’t because we were all dieting, it’s because we weren’t eating so much carbohydrate.