Morbid Obesity

[Greg]

Atkins definitely works.

The problem is that I really enjoy croissants and peanut butter on buttered toast.

Carbs are yummy.  Cheese sticks are yummy.  Chocolate Eclairs are yummy.

To give up eating them, I'd not just want to live 20 years longer but I'd want those 20 years to be 17 to 37 years old when I still had a spring in my step and the energy to travel the world.  Living from 70 to 85 ain't really a bonus as far as I can see.  Even if I was stinking rich and had plenty of free time, what would I do?  Travel the world?  That's horrible now, airline travel is hellish. 

You're felt up by the TSA, have to take your shoes and belt off, delayed...then they sit you next to someone with halitosis or stinky feet, the flight is delayed by too much air traffic, you get jet lag, cracked lips and a cough or cold because Terminal 3 is stuffed full of germ ridden third-worlders with bad hygiene.

Look after my grandchildren?  Perhaps, but really that's my children's job, not mine and at 80 years old I doubt I'll get much pleasure from it.  I'd do it to help them if I was alive, but I wouldn't enjoy it much.

My grandparents all made it past 80 and my grandmother lived to 102.  They all ate carbs.

So why give them up?  What's the upside of being thin?  Do I get 72 virgins or something?

[Gardener]

Two weeks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: bread and cheese for breakfast and lunch; meat and potatoes for supper(it was during Lent); walked an average of three miles a day, lost weight. Back in US, ate wheat products, felt miserable. Weight done come back, too. Something's to the fact that I can tolerate the carbs/wheat in Europe, but not in US.

I read once that Ghengis Khan fed his men every other day, and only meat. Bread was forbidden.

Do they have the added sugars there?

[Heinrich]

Two weeks in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: bread and cheese for breakfast and lunch; meat and potatoes for supper(it was during Lent); walked an average of three miles a day, lost weight. Back in US, ate wheat products, felt miserable. Weight done come back, too. Something's to the fact that I can tolerate the carbs/wheat in Europe, but not in US.

I read once that Ghengis Khan fed his men every other day, and only meat. Bread was forbidden.

Do they have the added sugars there?

I saw more fat (native) people than I did 20 years ago living there. I didn't eat any sweets since it was Lent(excepting Sundays and 25th of March). The "sweets" are not that sweet. Good, but not overwhelmingly sugary. As far as HFCS, I doubt it since corn is not grown in abundance there. That's also why cow meat is very expensive, yet pork is plentiful. This is my long, anecdotal answer of "I don't know."

[clau clau]

"Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you."

? George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

[angelcookie]

Heinrich, maybe the difference is they may use real fat like butter vs margarine? Even the cream here often has mono and diglycerides added now with carragean. Is the wheat there different somehow, non gmo or something?

[angelcookie]

Asians eat high carb, and they're usually slim. Italians and French too..

[Josephine87]

I like the 600-Pound Life show.  It's not a freak show.  Every episode has a different person and it shows their (partial) success at overcoming their eating problem.  I say partial because the person starts at such a high weight that there's never enough time to show them get down to a normal weight, but there are people who lose a lot.  It has a good dramatic sense to it: the person is at their lowest in life, they make a very painful decision to change, they hit a lot of speed bumps along the way, and ultimately, they improve.  It's uplifting. 

I find it very different from the shows that encourage their subjects to wallow in their degeneracy--where you can tell the camera is laughing at them and expecting the audience to laugh too.  There is nothing funny about this show.  A lot of the people talk about being survivors of child abuse or a traumatic event in adulthood.  It's a compassionate look at severely dysfunctional people.

[Bonaventure]

Asians eat high carb, and they're usually slim. Italians and French too..

Asians are beginning to get diabetes through the roof because of white rice.

[Lynne]

Asians eat high carb, and they're usually slim. Italians and French too..

Asians are beginning to get diabetes through the roof because of white rice.

Haven't they always eaten white rice?