How do you factor in the overabundance of cheap, nutritionally fucked food, and how that may affect those living paycheck to paycheck?
I eat constantly processed shit. I hate cooking, but it’s still damn simple, don’t get the biggest meal at McDonald’s, get the low sodium/fat frozen pre cooked meals that only have a couple hundred calories per serving for under the cost of a meal from fast food. Then you just don’t over eat, wait 20mins or so after and let your body naturally tell you it’s full instead of eating until you want to puke. Bottled water is cheaper than cans or soda regardless of if you get them from a dollar store or not. It’s literally cheaper to eat less food which is the main part of weight maintenance.
Side note, as a nurse I’ve seen patients who are obese because of circumstances and medical issues. Someone who has to work two jobs, has a kid, and newly discovered hypothyroidism is not obese because they don’t care. They have a medical issue and no extra time/resources to compensate for it with a refined diet and exercise (especially considering one of the most common symptoms of hypothyroidism is fatigue). You’re not even factoring in the undiagnosed, or those who don’t have access to sufficient healthcare.
Hypothyroidism is like 5% of the population. Obesity is at 40%, let’s not act like our obesity epidemic is because everyone with hypothyroidism is trying to move to the USA to boost our statistics.
My overall point is if you’re targeting obese people specifically, you’re not on the right track.
Na there is nuance between shaming someone for decisions made well within their control and understanding some are placed there beyond their control. I’m not advocating for those with hypothyroidism to be attacked, if anything calling out obesity would help bring awareness to those fronts as it would promote discussion about the issues instead of downplaying it so those with issues cant get the help needed like you descibed earlier in your post. Like trying to pass legislation that requires employers to give reasonable medical accommodations to those individuals so they have enough time to prep meals or even have subsidies that can give them more healthy choices at reasonable prices.
You’re touching on a lot of factors with this, so I’m going to try and address the bulk without being too lengthy.
First off, I think we should put aside the fringe of individuals that genuinely argue being morbudly obese is fine or are straight up in denial of obesity as a concept. I’d argue the percentage of obese people purely by choice are heavily in the minority. I haven’t really been convinced otherwise.
Hypothyroidism is not the only disease process that can cause obesity downstream. Quite a lot of disease can lead to this, either directly or indirectly. Beyond that, we haven’t even touched on mental illness – we view anorexia as a mental illness understand how that affects someone’s body, it feels odd that we don’t do the same with some mental illness and obesity – and how depression commonly leads to a failure to even carry out activities of daily living. The number of people struggling with obesity due to an underlying medical or mental health issue is much larger than you’re estimating.
As for your diet suggestions, they may work and be available to you, but we can’t reasonably extend that to a nationa-wide group. Food availability differs, resources differ, what’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. There are too many variables to argue anyone can topple/avoid obesity with “these 5 easy tricks!”.
Overall, I still come back to my original point. The obesity problem stems primarily from a struggling working class, overabundance of cheap processed food juxtaposed with more expensive healthier options, and poor healthcare availability (especially mental). Targeting the obese to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or be shamed is just reductive, and probably much more harmful than helpful. They know they’re obese, and I’m pretty confident in saying vast majority aren’t happy with it. Arguing to double down on the already significant social pressure with additional shaming feels like a cruel, ineffective solution to me.
Off topic, but I appreciate the username. I’ve been saying “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast” for ages and no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about.
I eat constantly processed shit. I hate cooking, but it’s still damn simple, don’t get the biggest meal at McDonald’s, get the low sodium/fat frozen pre cooked meals that only have a couple hundred calories per serving for under the cost of a meal from fast food. Then you just don’t over eat, wait 20mins or so after and let your body naturally tell you it’s full instead of eating until you want to puke. Bottled water is cheaper than cans or soda regardless of if you get them from a dollar store or not. It’s literally cheaper to eat less food which is the main part of weight maintenance.
Hypothyroidism is like 5% of the population. Obesity is at 40%, let’s not act like our obesity epidemic is because everyone with hypothyroidism is trying to move to the USA to boost our statistics.
Na there is nuance between shaming someone for decisions made well within their control and understanding some are placed there beyond their control. I’m not advocating for those with hypothyroidism to be attacked, if anything calling out obesity would help bring awareness to those fronts as it would promote discussion about the issues instead of downplaying it so those with issues cant get the help needed like you descibed earlier in your post. Like trying to pass legislation that requires employers to give reasonable medical accommodations to those individuals so they have enough time to prep meals or even have subsidies that can give them more healthy choices at reasonable prices.
You’re touching on a lot of factors with this, so I’m going to try and address the bulk without being too lengthy.
First off, I think we should put aside the fringe of individuals that genuinely argue being morbudly obese is fine or are straight up in denial of obesity as a concept. I’d argue the percentage of obese people purely by choice are heavily in the minority. I haven’t really been convinced otherwise.
Hypothyroidism is not the only disease process that can cause obesity downstream. Quite a lot of disease can lead to this, either directly or indirectly. Beyond that, we haven’t even touched on mental illness – we view anorexia as a mental illness understand how that affects someone’s body, it feels odd that we don’t do the same with some mental illness and obesity – and how depression commonly leads to a failure to even carry out activities of daily living. The number of people struggling with obesity due to an underlying medical or mental health issue is much larger than you’re estimating.
As for your diet suggestions, they may work and be available to you, but we can’t reasonably extend that to a nationa-wide group. Food availability differs, resources differ, what’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. There are too many variables to argue anyone can topple/avoid obesity with “these 5 easy tricks!”.
Overall, I still come back to my original point. The obesity problem stems primarily from a struggling working class, overabundance of cheap processed food juxtaposed with more expensive healthier options, and poor healthcare availability (especially mental). Targeting the obese to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or be shamed is just reductive, and probably much more harmful than helpful. They know they’re obese, and I’m pretty confident in saying vast majority aren’t happy with it. Arguing to double down on the already significant social pressure with additional shaming feels like a cruel, ineffective solution to me.
Off topic, but I appreciate the username. I’ve been saying “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast” for ages and no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about.