What makes you fat?

[si_c]

When I was a youngster I was always on the lash - and I still used to turn up for work in the morning if I was on overtime at the weekend. My hangover tolerance was higher then than it is now though - I still drink several times a week but limit myself to no more than 3/4 pints max per session. Partly this is to avoid putting on weight and partly because if I go over 3/4 pint average sessions then sometimes I feel a bit below par the next day. My body is telling me the max amount it can cope with without making me feel rough, so I tend to stick to it. I also find certain beers are worse for hangovers than others, even for the same strength. Fullers London Pride particularly doesn't agree with me so I avoid it. Oddly, ESB is OK even though it's stronger!

I really can't be bothered with all the nanny state health fascists who are incessantly lecturing everyone about what they eat and drink. They can all p*** off and mind their own business as far as I'm concerned. The guidelines are a load of cobblers and have no credibility or scientific basis. Until recently they recommended men not exceeding 21-28 units a week and women not exceeding 14-21 units. Those limits were realistic and took into account the different sizes of men and women. Now it's 14 units for everybody, despite the fact that men are on average quite a bit bigger than women and are better at processing alcohol anyway. Obviously some rabbit-food eating Guardian reading do-gooder has plucked the 14 unit figure out of thin air and decided that's what the masses should stick to.



Don't you believe it. Today's youngsters may not tend to down pint after pint in the way we do, but trust me they still hit the booze. They are drinking spirits mixed into fruit juice drinks instead. And a lot are drinking Gin. When I was that age only your mum or aunty used to drink gin, now the youngsters are necking it in large quantities instead of beer.

And that Ladies and Gentlemen is the rant of someone who has absolutely no idea about what they are talking.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I've never claimed that monster drinking sessions were good for you, but most of us have done it to a greater or lesser extent in our younger days. A lot of it is linked to young male oriented activities such as following sport, especially football. I've drunk at my current more restrained levels for a lot of years now and I don't suffer any ill effects from it.
As you get older the sort of over indulgence you used to just shrug off, makes you feel rough for a whole day, so you tone it down to a level at which you enjoy the social side without the hangovers. Each of us has an individual tolerance depending on our physical size and how efficiently our body can process the alcohol.

 

[MikeG]

"Calories in minus calories out makes you fat" is as true and as helpful as saying "flying the plane downwards into the ground made it crash". Yes, obviously, but you'd have a very short career as an air accident investigator if your reports all consisted of " the pilot should just have maintained level flight"

I disagree. The reason people have to keep re-stating the obvious is that there are millions of people who will argue otherwise. "Oh, it's just my genetics". "It's my metabolism". Blah, blah......there are thousands of excuses that people make as to why this absolute basic fundamental of the issue doesn't apply to them. Well, here's the news: this applies to everyone. It's physics, and nothing, but nothing, can subvert the basic laws of physics. To take your analogy, lots of people seem to think they can push the joystick forward as far as it will go and NOT fly into the ground.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

.....there are thousands of excuses that people make as to why this absolute basic fundamental of the issue doesn't apply to them. Well, here's the news: this applies to everyone. It's physics, and nothing, but nothing, can subvert the basic laws of physics.

It's far easier to blame your size on something, anything else, rather than face the truth that most people who are big fat lumps of lard are that way purely because they eat and drink the calorie intake of someone who does a hard physical job and is very active, but all they do themselves is sit behind a desk all day and drive everywhere. If you don't burn 3,000+ calories a day, you can't expect to consume 3,000+ calories a day without putting on weight. Your body either burns it or it stores it, it doesn't magically disappear into thin air.

 

[vickster]

It's far easier to blame your size on something, anything else, rather than face the truth that most people who are big fat lumps of lard are that way purely because they eat and drink the calorie intake of someone who does a hard physical job and is very active, but all they do themselves is sit behind a desk all day and drive everywhere. If you don't burn 3,000+ calories a day, you can't expect to consume 3,000+ calories a day without putting on weight. Your body either burns it or it stores it, it doesn't magically disappear into thin air.

Have you heard of basal metabolic rate? Just continuing to live actually requires calories to be burnt

In case you haven't...

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of energy expenditure per unit time by endothermic animals at rest. ... Metabolism comprises the processes that the body needs to function. Basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy per unit time that a person needs to keep the body functioning at rest.

 

[Alan O]

"Calories in minus calories out makes you fat" is as true and as helpful as saying "flying the plane downwards into the ground made it crash". Yes, obviously, but...

I agree, of course, and for many the hard part is working out how to get your calories in less than your calories out (without feeling constantly hungry)... so for the overweight people who know it, repeating it to them is not helpful.

But, as MikeG points out, there's a surprising number of people who either don't understand the simple fact, or who refuse to accept it. For many I think it's some form of denialism, but there do seem to be plenty who really do seem to think they can break the law of conservation of energy.

 

[MikeG]

Have you heard of basal metabolic rate? Just continuing to live actually requires calories to be burnt

In case you haven't...

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of energy expenditure per unit time by endothermic animals at rest. ... Metabolism comprises the processes that the body needs to function. Basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy per unit time that a person needs to keep the body functioning at rest.

Does that alter or contradict anything I wrote?

 

[vickster]

Does that alter or contradict anything I wrote?

I wasn't replying to you

But to this ...
If you don't burn 3,000+ calories a day, you can't expect to consume 3,000+ calories a day without putting on weight. Your body either burns it or it stores it, it doesn't magically disappear into thin air.

 

[T.M.H.N.E.T]

I'm waiting for people to realise that fat loss is exhaled

 

[Crackle]

I'm waiting for people to realise that fat loss is exhaled

Especially after 10 pints!

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

[QUOTE 5410489, member: 9609"] getting fit seems to greatly increase metabolic rate that sort of means you can et through a lot more calories whilst doing very little.

resting muscle uses something like 4x the energy than resting fat ? (not quite sure what non resting fat is)[/QUOTE]

Take two blokes, both weigh 16 stone. One does a lot of physical work or weight training and is built like a brick outhouse. The other one does a sedentary job and is merely very fat. The muscular bloke has more active body tissue that has to be maintained and supplied with nutrients 24/7 to keep him going, therefore he can get away with eating and drinking a lot more food & beer than the fat but weak bloke who sits in a chair pushing buttons all day.
When I was a kid, there might be one fat kid in the class, who would tend to get a lot of ribbing for it. Now, half of them are like it - because they sit around staring at screens not running about burning off the energy. We used to eat just as much crap as today's kids do, but we were more active.

 

[Crackle]

When I was a kid, there might be one fat kid in the class, who would tend to get a lot of ribbing for it. Now, half of them are like it - because they sit around staring at screens not running about burning off the energy. We used to eat just as much crap as today's kids do, but we were more active

There's some truth in what you say but obesity is linked to deprivation where it's twice as common and there's also a link to today's highly processed calorie dense, nutrient poor foods. In other words, there's more than one factor at play.

 

[Alan O]

I'm waiting for people to realise that fat loss is exhaled

Don't hold your breath, or you'll get fat!

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

There's some truth in what you say but obesity is linked to deprivation where it's twice as common and there's also a link to today's highly processed calorie dense, nutrient poor foods. In other words, there's more than one factor at play.

I'm not sure I entirely buy this "poverty = obesity" argument. It suits a certain political agenda and has been seized upon as a political football. I was a council estate boy who had a relatively poor upbringing and I've never been really fat. The other kids I went to school with mainly came from the same immediate area and were also mostly working class council estate kids. They weren't generally fat either.
People have got a lot more lazy in the years since I was a schoolkid, and the biggest change has been amongst the working classes - who have much higher car ownership and tend to do less physical jobs now. I know adults who wont go half a mile without driving, getting the bus, or calling an Uber car. They aren't exactly setting a good example to their kids, they are saying "being lazy is normal, being fat is normal"

 

[Crackle]

I'm not sure I entirely buy this "poverty = obesity" argument. It suits a certain political agenda and has been seized upon as a political football. I was a council estate boy who had a relatively poor upbringing and I've never been really fat. The other kids I went to school with mainly came from the same immediate area and were also mostly working class council estate kids. They weren't generally fat either.
People have got a lot more lazy in the years since I was a schoolkid, and the biggest change has been amongst the working classes - who have much higher car ownership and tend to do less physical jobs now. I know adults who wont go half a mile without driving, getting the bus, or calling an Uber car. They aren't exactly setting a good example to their kids, they are saying "being lazy is normal, being fat is normal"

Well that's why I mentioned foods. There's quite a lot of evidence that sugar and trans fats have a much higher impact on weight and health than inactivity and there's a lot of them in cheap processed foods. Not that inactivity isn't a factor. The world changes though, patterns of living change, I don't think the solution is to just imply people are lazy, you have to change peoples habits and that's done through education about food and exercise and the political will to make food production better. So in that sense it's political.