Diet and exercise alone are no cure for obesity, experts say

[Volourn]

"Just because you are the Master Race, doesn't mean no one else needs it."

 

I would think the Master Race would be a lot HOTTER than me. Just sayin'.

 

 

"I'm going to go out on a limb and assume most of us know that you can be skinny and still be in terrible health.     "

\

A. When I say 'skinny'; I don't mean I'm all bones.

 

B. I haven't needed to go to the hospital since I was a kid.

 

C. I have never missed work because of any sickness.

 

D. I will likely die of a 'surprise' heart attack at 40 (in less than 2 years).

 

R00fles!

 

 

P.S. The point is diet and exercise  is not some magic cure for fatness.

[Meshugger]

Volourn is just morbidly obese on the inside (his veins).

[Hurlshort]

 

 

 

P.S. The point is diet and exercise  is not some magic cure for fatness.

 

It's not magic, it's a highly effective strategy that rewards discipline and hard work with a better quality of life as you age.  

[Volourn]

Must explain why athletes often die young....

[Woldan]

Must explain why athletes often die young....

 

Might have something to do with the crazy steroid abuse and doping.  Being a professional athlete has absolutely nothing to do with being healthy. 

[Hurlshort]

 

Must explain why athletes often die young....

 

Might have something to do with the crazy steroid abuse and doping.  Being a professional athlete has absolutely nothing to do with being healthy. 

 

 

Or the brain damage they get from ramming into each other, or the massive amount of painkillers they live off to dull the pain.  But that's really only a few sports, many professional athletes do live long and healthy lives.

[Blarghagh]

Seems to me pushing your limits all the time must have some effect too, but yeah most of the time it's just circumstances or them being completely idiotic.

[Woldan]

With a good diet, reasonable exercise plan that incorporates some off days for recovery and good form there is no problem with pushing your NATURAL limits. 

Naturally you will hit an invisible wall before you can do any serious damage*. Beyond natural is where thing gets problematic.  

 

(* of course, my statement does not apply to those suffering from severe idiotism. )

Edited February 22, 2015 by Woldan

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

No it doesn't. If I was an agent of secret agency I couldn't answer honestly your question "what you do to make society better" as I wouldn't be allowed by other factors. This would not mean I don't follow my advice it just would mean I cannot talk about it. This was what I meant by my statement.

 

You missed the point. It's not that you can't talk about how you follow your own advice because you are James Bond. It's that you cannot possibly follow your own advice because it's unrealistic; it's not advice. It's feel-good mumbo jumbo designed to feed your übermensch fantasies. On second thought however, I may have been wrong. Hypocrite is he who chooses not to follow his own advice when applicable. I think the proper term for someone who heartily hands out and believes in advice that cannot be followed is... insane.

 

 

 

...Let's not do the thing where we insult the people who disagree with us; it's not gentlemanly.

 

Also, the problem with the advice he gives isn't that it's bad advice. It's perfectly good advice! With a very limited field of applicability. Incidentally, it's also a very MRA-sounding advice, a movement which has huge problems with taking perfectly good advice and observations and spinning them into completely insane diatribes by trying to apply them outside of their proper context. Given Mr. Sharp's fondness to, ahm, "choke a b*tch" from time to time, I think these two facts may be related.

 

 

I'm a bit confused. Are we talking about the moral obligation that a person has to help people with mental problems and vice versa or are talking about the legality of the state declaring people insane or not?

 

Neither. We're talking about whether it's moral to advise somebody who has suicidal thoughts to kill themselves instead of seeking professional help first.

[BruceVC]

 

 

I'm a bit confused. Are we talking about the moral obligation that a person has to help people with mental problems and vice versa or are talking about the legality of the state declaring people insane or not?

 

Neither. We're talking about whether it's moral to advise somebody who has suicidal thoughts to kill themselves instead of seeking professional help first.

 

 

For me its obvious, we have an absolute moral responsibility as a society to help people who suffer from mental ailments and to ensure they get professional help if they want to kill themselves. And this professional help should be mandatory if they refuse it because someone suffering from some sort of mental issue may not be in the best position to know what's best for them

[Valsuelm]

 

 

 

I'm a bit confused. Are we talking about the moral obligation that a person has to help people with mental problems and vice versa or are talking about the legality of the state declaring people insane or not?

 

Neither. We're talking about whether it's moral to advise somebody who has suicidal thoughts to kill themselves instead of seeking professional help first.

 

 

For me its obvious, we have an absolute moral responsibility as a society to help people who suffer from mental ailments and to ensure they get professional help if they want to kill themselves. And this professional help should be mandatory if they refuse it because someone suffering from some sort of mental issue may not be in the best position to know what's best for them

 

 

There is absolutely nothing moral about what you're saying here. In fact, it's quite evil.

[HoonDing]

He forgot the '?' at the end.

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

 

I'm a bit confused. Are we talking about the moral obligation that a person has to help people with mental problems and vice versa or are talking about the legality of the state declaring people insane or not?

 

Neither. We're talking about whether it's moral to advise somebody who has suicidal thoughts to kill themselves instead of seeking professional help first.

 

 

For me its obvious, we have an absolute moral responsibility as a society to help people who suffer from mental ailments and to ensure they get professional help if they want to kill themselves. And this professional help should be mandatory if they refuse it because someone suffering from some sort of mental issue may not be in the best position to know what's best for them

 

 

There is absolutely nothing moral about what you're saying here. In fact, it's quite evil.

 

 

Evil.....

 

How is getting  people professional psychiatric help evil?

[Janmanden]

Experts, pfth!!

 

They are right about one thing. Diet is no good. Face it. You eat boring food for awhile and you go nuts. You need to make a permanent change of food that is both delicious and healthy and you need to eat more often and eat less to keep up your metabolism. There is a lot of boring food, that can be turned delicious in the right hands, but finding those hands can be quite hard.

 

I am quite tall, 205 cm. I lost 55 pounds (25 Kg) after six months of marriage from 135 Kg to 110. I wasn't on a diet, but change of environment, food and natural exercise did the trick. In short: Sex and Salad. Well, it wasn't all Salad,but the change away from fast-food, butter, cream and candy made a huge difference as well as the daily bed exercise.

 

I also got rid of Psoriasis. I know now my body limits and that my Psoriasis is actually a warning sign posted by my body telling me that my condition is too stressful for the body to handle, but no one ever told me that in Denmark. None of the nurses, doctors or specialists told me that I had to lose weight to regain the balance of my body - they were all too happy writing recipes for insanely expensive cream and medicine that threw me even more off balance.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Janmanden

[Blarghagh]

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a bit confused. Are we talking about the moral obligation that a person has to help people with mental problems and vice versa or are talking about the legality of the state declaring people insane or not?

 

Neither. We're talking about whether it's moral to advise somebody who has suicidal thoughts to kill themselves instead of seeking professional help first.

 

 

For me its obvious, we have an absolute moral responsibility as a society to help people who suffer from mental ailments and to ensure they get professional help if they want to kill themselves. And this professional help should be mandatory if they refuse it because someone suffering from some sort of mental issue may not be in the best position to know what's best for them

 

 

There is absolutely nothing moral about what you're saying here. In fact, it's quite evil.

 

 

Evil.....

 

How is getting  people professional psychiatric help evil?

 

 

I don't think it's evil but I do think the last bit is misguided - it's a utopian ideal that would work in a world that works a lot differently from this one. Who classifies what "mentally ill" is? Who forces people to get their "help"? Most psychiatric help eventually comes down to behavioural conditioning or getting put on medication. Is a kid with ADD mentally ill and has to be forced to get treatment? Is a conspiracy nut delusional and has to get treatment? Sometimes just being slightly different can be considered "mentally ill" by the psychiatric community. And how does it get checked? Most of these things don't even get caught unless the person gets help themselves - mental illness is not readily apparent all the time. I know someone with PTSD from sexual abuse - her psychiatrist took years to find that out simply because she wasn't able to open up and bear that part of her past to the psychiatrist. What happens then, is that "not cooperating" with your fancy required mental treatment? Would she be subject to fines or whatever? I refused medication to deal with my depression, would I get an orderly to forcefully shove them down my throat under that system? "Mandatory" mental treatment may sound good on paper if your goal is "removing mental illness" but there's too many problems and factors for it to really be effective or even possible in my opinion, and "mandatory" usually meaning "government" it also would be way too easy to abuse to try and remove "undesirables" from society.

 

I think people who want help need to be able to get it more easily, so we need more insurance coverage for psychiatric help and better education on the subject, but "mandatory" treatment just has too many problems to be viable. Just my two cents.

[213374U]

No, it's not. Any life coach would tell you that the outcome is not always important. It's the act of trying to achieve a goal that's important. You can learn a lot in the process of trying to achieve something. Being passive and not acting is always wrong.

Any "life coach"? Funny, the coaches I've met are more interested in dealing with specific problems and offering experience-based advice than vague grandiloquent statements about success and failure. You must be speaking about the Facebook variant of "life coaches". Or perhaps the pseudoscience peddlers you can find in NLP seminars. It's irrelevant though, as you simply cannot prove that "any life coach would X".

 

I agree, trial and error is an essential part of the learning process. You may have missed the part where implementing suicide prevents you from learning anything else, though.

 

Oh, and please elaborate on how being passive and not acting is always wrong. Repetition of a baseless statement does not magically turn it into an ironclad argument.

 

 

It's your fault for trying to add something in my statement that wasn't there. It's not working

You should act on what you think is right and what you believe in. That is still my original statement no matter how many times you will try to change it. If you think suicide is right and you believe that then by all means do it. If not then don't. If something applies to some cases it doesn't mean it applies to all cases.

I didn't add anything. YOU were replying to TrueNeutral's post, here:

 

 

 

There has been this weird backlash going on against fit people lately though, like that mom who had the no excuses campaign. The whole fat shaming thing makes no sense to me. If you see someone super fit and you feel bad about it, that is your conscience working correctly.

I don't know if that's really "working correctly" because "feeling bad about it" can take so many forms. I highly doubt a person whose psychological response to seeing a fit person is "you'll never look like that, go die in a hole you fat pig" is going to be motivating, let alone the "correct response".

 

Correct response would be acting on that response not only think it.

 

Let me explain: if you quote somebody, it is assumed you are replying to what that person is saying. Like, directly making a follow-up comment in the same context, be it to support, dispute, offer a different viewpoint, or post a funny gif. If mean to make unrelated comments, the button you want reads "start new topic".

 

 

 

And? What's your point?

Some people will think it's right to quit. Some people will think it's right to stop carrying. Some people will try to obtain the necessary means to achieve their goal. Some people will devote their lives so their successors could achieve their goal. Some people will kill themselves.

You seem so lost in the woods with twisting my simple statement it's starting to be less hilarious. But only a little.

The issue is with the reasons that drive someone to "quit" or "stop carrying". The idea that people may think it's right to quit and ACTUALLY being right can only stand with perfect free will and omniscience as premises. But then, there are those who have them, and there are those who don't, right? And those who don't end up killing themselves because hey, "that is the way of things". Some are weak, some are strong, some will die and you don't really give a flying ****. **** happens, right?

 

That's awesome. The Objectivism thread is that-a-way. Here we discuss evidence-based stuff.

 

 

 

I'm not accusing you. I'm stating a fact. You try to add things to my statement that aren't there.

Let's make a test if two other people will confirm that my statement:

"You should act on what you think is right and what you believe in."

Means:

1. Until you succeed.

2. Repeat your attempt never changing your approach.

3. Kill yourself if you fail.

 

Then I will admit you 're right. But I think it will not happen.

While I'm explaining, providing links and sharing personal experience to illustrate my points, you are just waving your hands so hard that I can hear the sonic boom from here. I already explained those 3 in the last post. Your answer was "your point?". This clearly means you didn't understand anything. Go back and read it again. And again. And again. Until you understand and are able to produce an actual rebuttal. I'll be waiting.

 

 

 

My statement was: You should act on what you think is right and what you believe in.

So it's only logical then if I will think suicide is a right option in a given situation then yes I will do it. That doesn't mean I will think it's a right option if I fail. What is so complicated that you cannot comprehend.[/color]

Ah, of course. It is logical for those who think they must kill themselves to kill themselves. And you would if you did, because that's how you roll. But of course you will *never* think that yourself. Must be great to be one of the master race, no?

 

...and they were saying TN is full of it...

 

 

 

You may have missed the part where I said: You should act on what you think is right and what you believe in.

I never said: If you fail then kill yourself. That was you.

It is a consequence of the statement. One that you have already admitted to, yourself, in this very post. Let me put it in simple flowchart format for you.

 

"ACT ON WHAT YOU BELIEVE! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!" → Fail → "TRY AGAIN, YOU WRETCHED UNTERMENSCH!" → Nope, no good → Suicide?

 

If a person keeps failing, does not see a way to succeed, and this failure is tied to their self-worth, they may be led to consider suicide. This is both an actual real world occurrence AND the hypothetic case you were replying to. By your own advice, and your own admission above, they should kill themselves "because that's what they believe is right". This is not only a fairly terrible thing to say and symptomatic of a total lack of empathy, but it's also pretty bad logic.

[213374U]

Wall of text: The Sequel

 

 

Basically you could give a link to a Twilight fanfiction, it would be as relevant as those links.

We know fat people can get depressed, but that wasn't what I (and Valsuelm) asked for you to clarify.

You Stated that overweight people are cognitively impaired, which is not true. There are of course cognitively impaired people that are overweight but there is no correlation. You stating that overweight is equal to mental inability is insulting and could lead to some overweight people to suicide...how can you live with yourself? :D

If you wanted me to give you Twilight fanfic links, why didn't you say so? I won't judge.

 

The articles I linked to study the relationship between obesity and depression in some cases and dementia in others. The correlation between obesity and depression is hard to dispute, at least in those studies. I'll be happy to read and discuss other studies that find no such correlation if you can find them. but that doesn't mean everyone that is obese will be depressed, and it doesn't mean everyone that is obese will inevitably develop Alzheimer's. That is not how science works, and I never claimed that obese people are mentally impaired. I actually wrote a post for Valsuelm explaining what exactly I meant, both in a general sense and in this particular context. Go read it.

 

(And yes, that was you strawmanning)

 

 

 

By that statement no one can make any decision unless they are an omnibus, which doesn't happen. So please refrain from such idiotic statements, because it's purely abstract concept.

Yep, that doesn't follow from what I said. Nice try, no dice.

 

You are talking about people making the decision that suicide is right for them. I contest that on the basis that it's not generally an informed decision. I base this on the self-evident fact that people don't know everything. Therefore, they should put off the decision to off themselves until they have all the relevant facts. This is a counter-argument specifically to your suggestion that people kill themselves when they think that's what they must do, not when they are trying to decide if they should wear pants or not, or any other daily, inconsequential decision.

 

Or do you think people should fly airliners and operate nuclear reactors before receving proper training because your life coach told you that "the outcome isn't always important" and "being passive is always wrong"?

 

 

 

And who are you to decide that? Who are you to decide in which cases suicide is ok and in which it isn't. Everyone have a right to decide about themselves. Get your uncle Stalin portrait of the wall and try to act like a decent person instead of some ADD dictator.

I'm not deciding for anyone. I'm actually very much for people making their own decisions, provided they are informed and FREE decisions. Under the circumstances we are discussing, they are not, as per above.

 

Leave the windmills alone, Don Quixote.

 

 

 

Again statements you have no ground to back up. If a person decides to commit suicide then it's their decision. Maybe they did try every possible alternative and maybe they didn't - it's their choice if they did and it's their choice if they did. You have nothing to decide in this matter unless the decision making party ask you to. Comprende?

More hand-waving. I provided both an abstract reasoning and a real world analogy to show why your solution (death) isn't a solution at all. Care to discuss that?

 

"If a person decides to commit suicide it's their decision". Well, duh. See above for my stance on decisions.

 

 

 

Yeah, yeah a magical circle. I give you 100$, you give him, her etc. and it goes back to me and we all have 100$. Life doesn't work that way :D

Remember what you said, you need to seek guidance and advice BEFORE you act. So anyone need to seek guidance and advice BEFORE they give advice. Because giving advice is by definition an act. So your sweet little circle have endless people asking for guidance and advice and getting nothing in return.

Nah. Let's say I give you $100. You don't give the guy to your right $100, you give them some bread. Then that person gives the one to their right a hug and so on and so forth depending on what each individual skills and needs are. And considering that support networks are very much a real thing, the burden of proof is on you to establish that "life doesn't work that way".

 

And nope, I didn't say you need to seek guidance and advice before you act. I said you need to seek advice and guidance before you make any serious personal investment in general, and in particular (again, context) before killing yourself. If only because the permanent nature of that act precludes any further rectifications. That was you strawmanning.

 

 

 

Sh*t happens. This is life.

We will never have ALL the information because there is INFINITE amount of information and to obtain it we would need to spend inifite time and have infinite memory. Which we don't. So we need either to make decisions and act on the limited amount of information or follow your advice and do nothing, ever.

**** yeah. **** happens. Step up or shut up. Do or die. It's showtime, mother****ers.

 

Now, if we are done spouting meaningless one-liners and your boner has gone away, maybe we can talk?

 

Nope, you don't need to have ALL the information. You just need enough. How much is enough? In this context, sufficient to recognize that there are ways out of obesity that don't entail killing yourself.

 

As an aside, I'd love to hear an explanation on why information is infinite. I was under the impression that the universe is a closed system with finite energy. This would suggest that information in a quantum sense is, indeed, finite. However, by virtue of the principle of uncertainty, we know that information doesn't really "exist" unless an observer makes a measurement, and at that precise moment and by virtue of the measurement, the relevant "information" bit comes into existence. Again, since there can only be a limited amount of observers making a finite amount of measurements (because the universe has a finite energy, remember), information is also finite. Further, a prominent model of the end of the universe predicts that it will end with what is called "heat death". In this scenario, the universe becomes esentially a nothingness without distinguishable features (in simple terms, no information). If all information has been destroyed, this means information was finite to begin with. So what makes you say that information is infinite?

[Gorth]

I don't want to be an omnibus

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

I think people who want help need to be able to get it more easily, so we need more insurance coverage for psychiatric help and better education on the subject, but "mandatory" treatment just has too many problems to be viable. Just my two cents.

 

 

Yeah, this.

 

But the rampant misconceptions about how psychiatric help works, and the fact that people with mental health problems tend to be stigmatized mean that people are, by default, strongly disincentivized from seeking help in dealing with mental health issues. Therefore, in the specific cultural context of our world right now, advising people to seek professional help when having suicidal thoughts instead of acting on said thoughts is pretty much an objectively better choice.

Edited February 23, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

Nope, you don't need to have ALL the information. You just need enough. How much is enough? In this context, sufficient to recognize that there are ways out of obesity that don't entail killing yourself.

Example:

1st Person have 100% of all relevant information and wants to commit suicide - 213374U claims that his decision is wrong because he doesn't have all the information.

 

2nd Person have 0.000001% of all relevant information and claims suicide is not the answer - 213374U claims that person have all the information in the world.

 

 

...But who gets to decide what counts as "relevant" information?

 

I mean, just going by the fact that, say, 1st Person in this example thinks having the relevant informations of:

• I'm fat
• being fat in our current society comes not only with its associated health risks - ie. a high chance of developing Type 2 diabetes which sometimes comes with the attractive side orders of blindness and having to amputate a few limbs -, but a whole lot of social baggage, too, and
• I've tried Diet X, Y and Z with Exercise Programs A, B and C, yet I failed to get any slimmer

means suicide is just an overall cleaner way to get out than living 20 more years of being shat on by society while developing those sweet-ass health complications doesn't really mean he's also aware of, say, the countless ways diabetes can be managed and doesn't have to result in living as a blind multiple amputee hooked up on a dialyser, which, I'd say, is a pretty big factor in the cost-benefit analysis involved in reaching the conclusion that suicide is better.

Edited February 23, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Janmanden]

I don't want to be an omnibus

You could be a trolley-bus. They are big and nice and comfortable and they just breeze through the landscape without a sound. A bit slow, yes, but why rush a nice and peaceful experience? And they are quite healthy too, especially if they are green. Green is good. And you would not be alone in your diet and exercise. Sounds like the cure.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I don't want to be an omnibus

I suppose it's better than a tome.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

 

Nope, you don't need to have ALL the information. You just need enough. How much is enough? In this context, sufficient to recognize that there are ways out of obesity that don't entail killing yourself.

Example:

1st Person have 100% of all relevant information and wants to commit suicide - 213374U claims that his decision is wrong because he doesn't have all the information.

 

2nd Person have 0.000001% of all relevant information and claims suicide is not the answer - 213374U claims that person have all the information in the world.

 

 

...But who gets to decide what counts as "relevant" information?

 

It's irrelevant, just an abstract example. I was just pointing out 213374U is full of **** 

 

 

But that's the whole point, you assume people who want to commit suicide are possessing all relevant information, when in reality, they're generally not.

 

What gets labelled as "relevant" is just way too nebulous for this to be helpful. Creationists are also convinced that they know all relevant information; that doesn't mean their views are any less stupid from an outside perspective.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

But that's the whole point, you assume people who want to commit suicide are possessing all relevant information, when in reality, they're generally not.

 

I said no such thing. 

 

I think in the stance of "people know best whether suicide is the best option for them or not" it's implied that they're possessing all relevant information when making that decision. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[HoonDing]