Are You Aware of Your ‘Thin Privilege?’

[helmuth_hubener]

His point is that what you're saying works. Fasting does not.

Indeed, any kind of calorie-restriction does not.

The body does not appreciate being calorie-restricted.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I will go further to say overweight people are overweight due to lack of knowledge of nutrition.

Thanks. That does summarize my point.

Fast food is bad

Jerky is fast. Apples are fast.

and processed food is bad

Are all processes the same? Freeze-drying is a process. Fermentation is a process.

People do not need to go on a diet per se,

People need to absolutely not go on a diet. It doesn't work.

they need a life-style change.

Exactly; I agree.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I don't get your point, Hubener.

My point is probably garbled because I'm trying to sum up too much in too short of a post.

Here is what I'm really trying to say, if you have the time and interest:

THE PERFECT STORM OF DIETING​

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.

—Plutarch

How did I let this happen again?

—Oprah Winfrey

There is nothing so universally desired in rich countries as flat abs. The more money we make, and the more of it we give to the diet industry, the more impossible that ideal seems. Losing weight is the most popular New Year’s resolution year after year, diet after forsaken diet. In the long run, the vast majority of dieters fail. Therefore, we are not going to guarantee you an eternally svelte body. But we can tell you which techniques are more likely to help you lose weight, and we’ll start with the good news. If you’re serious about controlling your weight, you need the discipline to follow these three rules:

1. Never go on a diet.
2. Never vow to give up chocolate or any other food.
3. Whether you’re judging yourself or judging others, never equate being overweight with having weak willpower.

You may not have kept your resolution to lose ten pounds this year, but that doesn’t mean you should take up a diet or swear off sweets. And you certainly shouldn’t lose faith in your ability to accomplish other feats, because being overweight is not a telltale sign of weak willpower, even if most people think so. Ask a few modern Americans what they use self-control for, and dieting is likely to be the first answer. Most experts have made the same assumption for decades. At professional conferences and in scientific journal articles, when researchers have to give an example to illustrate some problem of self-control, they tend to pick dieting more often than any other sort of example.

Recently, though, researchers have found that the relationship between self-control and weight loss is much less direct than everyone thought. They’ve discovered something we’ll call the Oprah Paradox, in honor of the world’s most famous dieter. Early in her career, when she was working as a newscaster, Oprah Winfrey’s weight rose from 125 to 140 pounds, so she went to a diet doctor and was put on a twelve-hundred-calories-per-day plan. She followed it, lost 7 pounds the first week, and within a month was back down to 125. But then she gradually put it back on. When she hit 212 pounds, she gave up solid food for four months, subsisting on liquid diet supplements, and got back down to 145 pounds. But within a few years she was heavier than ever, at 237 pounds, and her journal was filled with prayers to lose weight. When she was nominated for an Emmy Award, she prayed for her rival talk-show host Phil Donahue to win. That way, as she later recalled, “I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself by rolling my fat butt out of my seat and walking down the aisle to the stage.” She had just about lost hope when she met Bob Greene, a personal trainer, whereupon the two of them transformed each other’s lives.

He became a bestselling author of training regimens and recipes he used with Winfrey, and began selling his own line of Best Life food. Guided by Greene and her personal chef (who wrote his own bestseller), and by the nutritionists and doctors and other experts on her show, Winfrey changed what she ate, how she exercised, how she lived. She established weekly calendars of all her meals, specifying precisely when she would eat tuna, when salmon, when salad. Her assistants built her schedule around the meals and the workouts. She received emotional counsel from friends like Marianne Williamson, the spiritual writer, who discussed with her the relationship between weight and love.

The result was displayed on the cover of Winfrey’s magazine in 2005: a radiant, sleek woman weighing 160 pounds. (Note, though, that this triumph still put her 20 pounds above what she weighed at the start of her first diet.) Winfrey’s success story was an inspiration both to her fans and to an anthropologist at Emory University, George Armelagos. He used it to illustrate a historic shift that he dubbed the King Henry VIII and Oprah Winfrey Effect. In Tudor England, it wasn’t easy keeping anyone as fat as Henry VIII. His diet required resources and labor from hundreds of farmers, gardeners, fishermen, hunters, butchers, cooks, and other servants. But today even commoners can get as fat as King Henry VIII—in fact, poor people tend to be fatter than the ruling classes. Thinness has become a status symbol because it’s so difficult for ordinary people to achieve unless they’re genetically lucky. To remain thin, it takes the resources of Oprah Winfrey and a new array of vassals: personal trainer, chef, nutritionist, counselor, assorted assistants.

Yet even that kingdom is no guarantee, as viewers of Oprah started to notice, and as Winfrey herself acknowledged in a refreshingly frank article four years after the celebratory cover. This time her magazine’s cover showed the old picture of herself, at 160 pounds, next to her current 200-pound self. “I’m mad at myself,” Winfrey told readers. “I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I’m still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, ‘How did I let this happen again?’” She explained it as a combination of overwork and medical problems, both of which could have depleted her willpower, but even then, Oprah Winfrey was obviously someone with self-discipline. She couldn’t have kept the rest of her life going so successfully without self-control. She had extraordinary personal willpower, access to the world’s finest professional advice, a cadre of dedicated monitors, plus the external pressure of having to appear every day in front of millions of people watching for any sign of weight gain. Yet despite all her strength and motivation and resources, she couldn’t keep the pounds off.

That’s what we call the Oprah Paradox: Even people with excellent self-control can have a hard time consistently controlling their weight. They can use their willpower to thrive in many ways—at school and work, in personal relationships, in their inner emotional lives—but they’re not that much more successful than other people at staying slim. When Baumeister and his colleagues in the Netherlands analyzed dozens of studies of people with high self-control, they found that these self-disciplined people did slightly better than average at controlling their weight, but the difference wasn’t as marked as in other areas of their lives. This pattern showed up clearly among the overweight college students in a weight-loss program who were studied by Baumeister along with Joyce Ehrlinger, Will Crescioni, and colleagues at Florida State University. At the outset of the program, the students who scored higher on personality tests of self-control had a slight advantage—they started out weighing a little less and having better exercise habits than the people with lower self-control—and their advantage increased over the course of the twelve-week program because they were better at following the rules to restrict eating and increase exercising. But while their self-discipline helped them control their weight, it didn’t seem to make a huge difference either before or during the study. High self-control was better than low self-control, but not by much.

And if the researchers had tracked the students after the weight-loss program ended, no doubt many of them would have put the pounds right back on, just as Oprah Winfrey and so many other dieters have done. Their self-control would have been useful in helping them keep up the exercise routine, but exercising isn’t enough to guarantee weight loss. Even though it seems logical that burning more calories would get rid of pounds, researchers have found that the body responds by craving more food, so increased exercise doesn’t necessarily lead to long-term weight loss. (But it’s still worthwhile for lots of other reasons.) Whether or not you have good self-control, whether or not you exercise, if you go on a diet, the odds are that you won’t permanently lose weight.

One reason is basic biology. When you use self-control to go through your in-box or write a report or go jogging, your body doesn’t react viscerally. It’s not physically threatened by your decision to pay bills instead of watch television. It doesn’t care whether you’re writing a report or surfing the Web. The body might send you pain signals when you exercise too strenuously, but it doesn’t treat jogging as an existential threat. Dieting is different. As the young Oprah Winfrey discovered, the body will go along with a diet once or twice—but then it starts fighting back. When fat lab rats are put on a controlled diet for the first time, they’ll lose weight. But if they’re then allowed to eat freely again, they’ll gradually fatten up, and if they’re put on another diet it will take them longer to lose the weight this time. Then, when they once again go off the diet, they’ll regain the weight more quickly than the last time. By the third or fourth time they go through this boom-and-bust cycle, the dieting ceases to work; the extra weight stays on even though they’re consuming fewer calories.

Evolution favored people who could survive famines, so once a body has gone through the experience of not getting enough to eat, it reacts by fighting to keep all the pounds it has. When you diet, your body assumes there’s a famine and hangs on to every fat cell it can. The ability to lose weight through a drastic change in diet ought to be conserved as a precious, one-time capability. Perhaps you’ll need it late in life, when your health or your survival will depend on being able to lose weight.

Instead of going for a quick weight loss today, you’re better off using your self-control to make gradual changes that will produce lasting effects, and you have to be especially careful in your strategies. You face peculiarly powerful challenges at every stage of the self-control process—from setting a goal to monitoring yourself to strengthening your willpower. When they wheel over the dessert cart, you’re not facing an ordinary challenge. It’s more like the perfect storm.

The first step in self-control is to establish realistic goals. To lose weight, you could look in the mirror, weigh yourself, and then draw up a sensible plan to end up with a trimmer body. You could do that, but few do. People’s goals are so unrealistic that an English bookmaker, the William Hill agency, has a standing offer to bet against anyone who makes a plan to lose weight. The bookmaker, which offers odds of up to 50 to 1, lets the bettors set their own targets of how much weight to lose in how much time. It seems crazy for a bookie to let bettors not only set the terms of the wager but also control its outcome—it’s like letting a runner bet on beating a target time he sets himself. Yet despite these advantages, despite the incentive to collect payoffs that have exceeded seven thousand dollars, the bettors lose 80 percent of the time.

Female bettors are especially likely to lose, which isn’t surprising considering the unrealistic goals set by so many women. They look in the mirror and dream the impossible dream: a “curvaceously thin” body, as it’s known to researchers who puzzle over these aspirations. The supposed ideal of a 36-24-36 figure translates to someone with size 4 hips, a size 2 waist, and a size 10 bust—someone, that is, with ample breasts but little body fat, who must be either a genetic anomaly or the product of plastic surgery.

With this as the ideal, it’s no wonder that so many people set impossible goals. When you detest what you see in the mirror, you need self-control not to start a crash diet. You need to remind yourself that diets typically work at first but fail miserably in the long run.


The Dieter’s Catch-22

Humans are born with an innate gift for eating just the right amount. When an infant’s body needs food, it sends a signal through hunger pangs. When the body has had enough food, the infant doesn’t want to eat any more. Unfortunately, children start to lose this ability by the time they enter school, and it continues to decline later in life for some people—often the ones who need it the most. Why this occurs has been puzzling scientists for decades, starting with some research in the 1960s that revolutionized the study of eating.

...

Clearly, if you’re a dieter who doesn’t want to lose self-control, you shouldn’t spend a lot of time sitting right next to a bowl of M&M’s. Even if you resist those obvious temptations, you’ll deplete your willpower and be prone to overeating other foods later.

But there’s also another way to avoid this problem, as illustrated in a third experiment involving young women and food. This time Vohs and Heatherton tested nondieters in addition to dieters, and a clear distinction emerged. It turned out that the nondieters could sit next to an array of snacks—Doritos, Skittles, M&M’s, salted peanuts—without using up willpower. Some ate the snacks and some didn’t, but either way, they weren’t struggling to restrain themselves, so they remained relatively fresh for other tasks. The dieters, meanwhile, gradually depleted their willpower as they fought the urge to break their diet. They went through the same struggle that you see played out at social events when dieters are confronted with fattening food. The dieters can resist for a while, but each act of resistance further lowers their willpower.

Then, as they’re weakening, they face yet another of the peculiarly maddening challenges of controlling eating. To continue resisting temptation, they need to replenish the willpower they’ve lost. But to resupply that energy, they need to give the body glucose. They’re trapped in a nutritional catch-22:

1. In order not to eat, a dieter needs willpower.
2. In order to have willpower, a dieter needs to eat.

Faced with this dilemma of whether to eat or not, a dieter might try telling herself that the best option is to slightly relax the diet. She might reason that it’s best to consume a little food and try to salve her conscience: Look, I had to break the diet in order to save it. But once she strays from the diet, we know what she’s liable to tell herself: What the hell. And then: Let the binge begin.

Sweet food becomes especially hard to resist because, as we’ve already seen, self-control depletes the glucose in the bloodstream. If you’ve ever been on a diet and found yourself unable to shake those intrusive cravings for chocolate or ice cream, this is more than a matter of repressed desires coming back to haunt you. There is a sound physiological basis. The body “knows” that it has depleted the glucose in its bloodstream by exerting self-control, and it also seems to know that sweet-tasting foods are typically the fastest way to get an infusion of energy-rich glucose. In recent lab studies, college students who performed self-control tasks that had nothing to do with food or dieting found themselves having higher desires for sweet foods. When allowed to snack during the next task, those who had previously exerted self-control ate more sweet snacks, but not other (salty) snacks.
If these yearnings seem overpowering, we can suggest a couple of defensive strategies. The first is to use the postponed-pleasure ploy: Tell yourself that you can have a small sweet dessert later if you still want it. (We’ll discuss this ploy later, too.) Meanwhile, eat something else. Remember, your body is craving energy because it has used up some of its supply with self-control. The body feels a desire for sweet foods, but that is only because that is a familiar and effective way to restore energy. Healthy foods will also provide the energy it needs. It’s not what’s on your mind, but it should do the trick.

Remember, too, that the depleted state makes you feel everything more intensely than usual. Desires and cravings are exceptionally intense to the depleted person. Dieting is a frequent drain on your willpower, and so the dieter will frequently be in a depleted state. That will, in effect, turn up the volume on many good and bad things that happen throughout the day. It will also make longings—yes, unfortunately, even the longings for food, which are already there—seem especially intense. This may help explain why, eventually, many dieters seem to cultivate a numbness to their body’s wants and feelings about food.

There is no magical solution to the dieter’s catch-22. No matter how much willpower you start off with, if you’re a dieter and spend enough time sitting near the dessert buffet telling yourself no, eventually no will probably change to yes. You need to avoid the dessert cart—or, better yet, avoid going on a diet in the first place. Instead of squandering your willpower on a strict diet, eat enough glucose to conserve willpower, and use your self-control for more promising long-term strategies. -- Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength​

~~~

The more promising long-term strategy that I happen to like is the Primal Blueprint of Mark Sisson. I came to choose it not because of any big weight problem, but simply a desire for optimum health. The Primal Blueprint's focus on eating foods with a "slow burn" -- lots of slow-burning, satiating fats, especially -- lines up very well with the research in Willpower. In another chapter, Willpower recommends:

When you eat, go for the slow burn. The body converts just about all sorts of food into glucose, but at different rates. Foods that are converted quickly are said to have a high glycemic index. These include starchy carbohydrates like white bread, potatoes, white rice, and plenty of offerings on snack racks and fast-food counters. Eating them produces boom-and-bust cycles, leaving you short on glucose and self-control—and too often unable to resist the body’s craving for quick hits of starch and sugar from doughnuts and candy. Those all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts on Fat Tuesday may make for wilder parades, but they’re not all that useful the rest of the year.
To maintain steady self-control, you’re better off eating foods with a low glycemic index: most vegetables, nuts (like peanuts and cashews), many raw fruits (like apples, blueberries, and pears), cheese, fish, meat, olive oil, and other “good” fats. (These low-glycemic foods may also help keep you slim.) The benefits of the right diet have shown up in studies of women with PMS, who report fewer symptoms when they’re eating healthier food.​

 

[Zippyjuan]

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I will go further to say overweight people are overweight due to lack of knowledge of nutrition. Fast food and processed food is bad, but you have to know why it is bad for your health. Certain medications will make people pack on weight too--but you have to know why.

People do not need to go on a diet per se, they need a life-style change.

Genetics can also be a factor. Genes can impact how your body handles what you consume.

And time pressures. It takes time to shop for good foods and time to prepare them. Some get home from work and have only time to feed the kids, clean the house, and go to bed. So they buy something quick- which are usually less healthy alternatives.

Helmut's point in summary. Going on a diet (temporarily changing what you eat and exercise) won't help you in the long run. Changes need to be life-long. But you won't stick with dramatic changes- you will want to revert back to what you are familiar and comfortable with.

Another issue with "dieting". It will slow your metabolism because your body thinks there is a food shortage and it must protect itself. It will start to burn fewer calories and store more fat. Then when you go back to what you did before the "diet", you gain even more weight than before you started.

 

[Blueskies]

Ok, I get what you're saying.

But fundamentally, people need to understand that certain foods are categorically bad and should never be eaten. They're basically poison.

No one should ever have french fries. Ever. No one should ever eat ice cream. Cake? Maybe once a year on your birthday. No reason to ever eat potato chips. Fast food -- get a grilled chicken sandwich, no mayo.

If you can eat completely clean, then yes, you can have as much as you want.

 

[BamaAla]

Cathy, is that you? I had high hopes that I would never go to RPF and see a post on "privilege"; I have been dashed.

 

[donnay]

Genetics can also be a factor. Genes can impact how your body handles what you consume.

And time pressures. It takes time to shop for good foods and time to prepare them. Some get home from work and have only time to feed the kids, clean the house, and go to bed. So they buy something quick- which are usually less healthy alternatives.

Helmut's point in summary. Going on a diet (temporarily changing what you eat and exercise) won't help you in the long run. Changes need to be life-long. But you won't stick with dramatic changes- you will want to revert back to what you are familiar and comfortable with.

Another issue with "dieting". It will slow your metabolism because your body thinks there is a food shortage and it must protect itself. It will start to burn fewer calories and store more fat. Then when you go back to what you did before the "diet", you gain even more weight than before you started.

There are environmental triggers that can cause obesity too.

Genetics and epigenetics of obesity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3213306/

Obesity, Epigenetics, and Gene Regulation
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/obesity-epigenetics-and-gene-regulation-927

 

[enoch150]

There is a very wide variety of opinions on what constitutes "wholesome." Most of those opinions appear to be wrong, based on the complete and utter failure of dieting. The research is clear.

If you focus on "number of calories in" and try to reduce that number through willpower, or (even worse) if you focus on "number of calories out" and try to to increase that number while keeping the calorie intake the same, via willpower, all the data shows that you will certainly completely fail.

If that were the case, then it would be impossible for anyone to lose weight, ever.

Calories in - calories out = change in body weight. That isn't in dispute. The body can't get bigger without the building blocks to do it and it can't get smaller unless it burns more fuel than it takes in.

The problem with yo-yo dieting is that people try to cut calories too far and it slows their metabolism, thus reducing the "calories out" part and they gain weight even while eating the same numberor fewer calories than before.

The minimum number of calories you need to consume without slowing your metabolism is called the Basal Metabolic Rate. If anyone wants to lose weight and keep it off, they need to eat less than their Total Daily Energy Expenditure, but more than their Basal Metabolic Rate.

There are calculators that can provide a pretty good estimate of each: http://www.globalrph.com/revised-harris-benedict-equation.htm

There are some problems with actually counting calories. Some protein and fat can be used for functions other than fuel, and the calories listed on a package of food are frequently just wrong, or could be significantly different than what is ultimately available to the body (cooking food often makes it easier to digest.) That doesn't change the calories in - calories out formula, it just makes it difficult to get an accurate number.

Anyone who burns more calories than they consume is going to lose weight, even if they only eat McDonald's and Twinkies. They'll have severe nutritional deficiencies and a host of other problems, but they won't be overweight. And if they don't restrict calorie consumption below their BMR, they won't have a problem keeping it off.

 

[fr33]

This privilege shit is fucking bullshit. I recently responded to someone accusing a black man of having "white privilege".

This link is supposed to direct to the comment but not sure if it will work. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/...-him-claim-to-empty-homes/#comment-1289142168

If black people have white privilege, then we've come full circle and racism is dead and gone.

 

[enoch150]

Genetics can also be a factor. Genes can impact how your body handles what you consume.

Yeah, sure.

 

[James Madison]

Yeah, sure.

While I agree that most overweight people are not so because of their genetics, there are a few cases where this is true. For example, mutations in the gene NPC1 are strongly associated with obesity, which makes sense given its roll as an integral membrane protein. On the flip-side, people with mutations in this gene are immune to Ebola infection. Give and take, I suppose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC1

 

[Blueskies]

Obviously, some people are going to be naturally "thicker" than others, and some people are lucky and never have a problem maintaining their weight. But once your 30, 50, 100 lb+ overweight it's time to admit that it's your lifestyle at fault, not your genetics.

 

[Cabal]

Cathy, is that you?

I wondered the same thing.

The problem with privilege and libertarianism

From what I’ve seen on the Net lately, there are many libertarians who need to ask themselves what issues they are a libertarian on.

For those of you new to libertarianism or who don’t know much about it, it is actually a rather simple political philosophy. When all is boiled down, it can be summed up in a single statement known as the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): No one has the right to initiate aggression or violence against an innocent person or their property.

That is it. This is about as inclusive a philosophy as you are going to get.

Unfortunately, for such a simple message, it gets contaminated by people who either aren’t libertarians but pretend to be, or are libertarians but for the wrong reason. They are not comfortable with just leaving it at the NAP because that’s not really what got them involved in the liberty movement.

Recently there has been a feud between libertarians over several irrelevant issues, mainly the concept of “privilege,” that showcases this distinct separation between those who are interested in liberty and those who have other axes to grind.

I like to consider myself a calm person. Most of the time. But I lose all patience when someone throws out the word “privilege” out of nowhere. Usually, it’s because the person who employs the word is using it while making a highly judgmental, snide, haughty and ignorant remark about someone else.

For example, I was once accused of denying my “white privilege” when explaining why I had no college debt. I insisted that the fact that I had attended an inexpensive, in-state university, worked through high school saving up for college, spent next to no money during the school year, and lived in a old miner’s shack my last quarter while graduating a year early had something to do with it.

No. It was solely because there is some mystical power called “white privilege” that enabled me to pay my bills and not take out a loan.

Just as a side note, when someone says “privilege,” most of the time they really mean someone else made better life choices and are enjoying the fruits, while they made poor choices and are suffering for it but refuse to accept responsibility for it.

You’d think that as libertarians, these people would be interested in attacking the obvious privileges that the State enjoys, such as a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, money, taxation, and countless other immunities granted to its members which do not apply to ordinary citizens.

Silly me to think that. Apparently the real problem facing our society isn’t the Federal Reserve, the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act, NSA surveillance programs, drone strikes, undeclared wars, or warrant-less searches. These are not the greatest threat to our liberties, according to these so-called libertarians.

So what is?

White male privilege with Bitcoin.

You read that right.

The argument started when a female libertarian accused Bitcoin of having white male privilege because its users are overwhelming white men.

This is the kind of argument one would expect to get from conventional political thinking – which is really no thinking at all. Nowhere in this assessment does the libertarian attempt to provide evidence for their highly contentious and facile assertion. Nor do they raise any thought-provoking questions, such as what constitutes “privilege” and what it has to do with libertarianism. If no one’s rights are being violated, then what concern is it of ours?

Bitcoin, in case you don’t know, is an open sourced digital currency anyone can use anywhere in the world. Unlike a central bank, it is run by no one.

This is one of many, many reasons why I so despise the use of the word “privilege.” It’s a cop out for someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about to make judgments based on superficial observations.

One has to ask if this person had even tried using Bitcoin – or maybe the question answers itself.

One simple question could have settled this for her.

1. What part of Bitcoin gives white males an advantage or privilege in terms of its use that other people do not receive, and in what way are people’s rights violated by this?

The answer, of course, is none.

Yesterday the Libertarian Republic published this column, in which the writer discusses this feud within the context of a bigger argument that libertarians need to branch out more to attract people beyond the white male demographic. The writer is vague in terms of details and concrete steps to take, but it’s fairly apparent what they’re implying. The author argues that we need to stop talking so much about topics like critical theory - which has nothing to do with libertarianism – and talk more about issues like privilege – things that progressives and leftists love to preach on.

Tom Woods has written on these types of libertarians, saying:

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking dominates a certain wing of the libertarian movement, which congratulates itself for its “thick” libertarianism, as opposed to the (I guess) thin kind embraced by the rest of us. Yes, yes, they concede, nonaggression is the key thing, but if you really want to promote liberty you can’t just oppose the state. You have to oppose “the patriarchy,” embrace countercultural values, etc.

Then, once libertarianism has been made to seem as freakish and anti-bourgeois as possible, these same people turn around and blame the rest of us for why the idea isn’t more popular.

In the 1850′s, abolitionists, the only group opposing slavery on moral grounds, comprised a paltry 2% of the voting population. Clearly only a specific demographic believed in emancipation and pushed for it. Was that due to privilege? Or could there perhaps have been other factors involved?

We should be less concerned with the demographic make-up of the liberty movement and more concerned about maintaining its integrity and core beliefs.

Sadly, this is something I see way too often. A druggie hears that libertarianism promotes drug legalization and jumps onto the political bandwagon. Someone doesn’t want to pay taxes – but has no problem with others being forced to pay – and thinks that makes him libertarian. I tend to call them “single-issue libertarians,” because there is only one reason they joined, and it has nothing to do with liberty or freedom.

As the Good Book says, by their fruits ye shall know them. When someone spends more time attacking an unregulated, non-government digital currency instead of the Fed, that tells you something.

 

[Origanalist]

Cathy, is that you? I had high hopes that I would never go to RPF and see a post on "privilege"; I have been dashed.

I wondered the same thing.

I hope the two of you weren't under the impression I support this.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I hope the two of you weren't under the impression I support this.

But it was, like, so confusing, d00d!

 

[helmuth_hubener]

If that were the case, then it would be impossible for anyone to lose weight, ever.

Yep. And that does, in fact, appear to be the case!

In empirical but complex and exception-filled sciences like biology, results of 100% rarely come about in any experiment that's remotely interesting. But 99% or even 90% is the same thing as 100%, for all practical purposes. That is, since only 10% or less of humans seem to be able to permanently lose weight by going on a diet, none of us should go on diets. For most (essentially all) of us, it will not work. You cannot predict in advance if you're one of the aberrant 10%.

Calories in - calories out = change in body weight. That isn't in dispute. The body can't get bigger without the building blocks to do it and it can't get smaller unless it burns more fuel than it takes in.

I dispute that trying to change this equation will lead to any good results. The body is supposed to take care of this matter, automagically. It shouldn't be an issue. You should never have to count calories. There's a very nice PID feedback system built right in called "Hunger, Lack-of-Hunger" that manages it all perfectly. Like a well-tuned cruise control system it keeps us cruising right along at a more or less ideal weight.

In other words, this equation, while interesting from a physics and conservation of energy perspective, is completely useless and irrelevant and should be forgotten about entirely.

The problem with yo-yo dieting is that people try to cut calories too far and it slows their metabolism, thus reducing the "calories out" part and they gain weight even while eating the same numberor fewer calories than before.

The minimum number of calories you need to consume without slowing your metabolism is called the Basal Metabolic Rate. If anyone wants to lose weight and keep it off, they need to eat less than their Total Daily Energy Expenditure, but more than their Basal Metabolic Rate.

This is a very nice theory, but I do not think that there is any empirical research whatsoever showing that it works. Do you know of any studies? I am open to changing my mind and saying "well, I guess Enoch was right -- you can lose weight by using willpower to restrict calories after all, as long as you don't restrict too much," if you can find some good, solid research proving the case.

Until then, I'm highly skeptical. It sounds like yet another dieting idea in the long, proud tradition of dieting ideas which sound good on paper, but which utterly fail in their objective: to enable people to permanently change their body composition. I think the body is pretty clever. If, let's say, you're 100 pounds overweight, and you start eating just barely more than your Basal Metabolic Rate, it might work for a month or two (assuming you've never dieted before, this is your first time). Then the body will realize what's going on, adjust, and fight back. You will end up being 110 or 120 pounds overweight some couple years down the road.

There are calculators that can provide a pretty good estimate of each: http://www.globalrph.com/revised-harris-benedict-equation.htm

Again: useless and irrelevant! Barking up wrong tree!

There are some problems with actually counting calories. Some protein and fat can be used for functions other than fuel

Ummm, you think?

, and the calories listed on a package of food are frequently just wrong, or could be significantly different than what is ultimately available to the body (cooking food often makes it easier to digest.) That doesn't change the calories in - calories out formula, it just makes it difficult to get an accurate number.

There is no reason to want that number! All the research shows that getting your hands on that number does not increase your probability of losing weight -- astoundingly, it decreases it!

Anyone who burns more calories than they consume is going to lose weight, even if they only eat McDonald's and Twinkies. They'll have severe nutritional deficiencies and a host of other problems, but they won't be overweight. And if they don't restrict calorie consumption below their BMR, they won't have a problem keeping it off.

Well, you link me to the study. I'd hate to be purveying false or outdated information.

 

[Cabal]

I hope the two of you weren't under the impression I support this.

No worries, I wasn't.

 

[Blueskies]

Yep. And that does, in fact, appear to be the case!

In empirical but complex and exception-filled sciences like biology, results of 100% rarely come about in any experiment that's remotely interesting. But 99% or even 90% is the same thing as 100%, for all practical purposes. That is, since only 10% or less of humans seem to be able to permanently lose weight by going on a diet, none of us should go on diets. For most (essentially all) of us, it will not work. You cannot predict in advance if you're one of the aberrant 10%.

And that, hubener, is where you descended into the realm of nonsense.

Statistically speaking, 90% of Americans will never earn a six figure salary. Does that mean that you shouldn't aspire to earn one, or that if you do happen to earn one, you're just "lucky" -- that it was based on nothing more than random chance? Of course not. While statistically unlikely, there are a set of fairly concrete rules that can be used to reliably achieve a six figure salary (go to a good school, get a degree in a field that pays well, work hard, etc.) Just as there are a set of fairly concrete rules that can be used to reliably lose weight and keep it off permanently.

That's not to say that it's easy -- it's very difficult. Kicking a heroin addition isn't easy either, and indeed, the vast most addicts eventually relapse. That doesn't mean that you just dismiss the possibility of recovery entirely, write it off as hopeless.

If you are severely overweight, it is a reflection of your lifestyle. If you change your lifestyle (add more physical activity, stop eating certain foods) your body will change. That is indisputable. It's very hard to change your lifestyle, but it can be done.

 

[Spikender]

As if I don't see enough about privilege this and privilege that in my day to day routine on the Internet.

Honestly, it's a lame concept that holds no water and just makes people who made shitty decisions feel better. Thin-privilege my ass, white privilege my ass, go to the cleaners with that bullshit and wash it out.

 

[enoch150]

The body is supposed to take care of this matter, automagically. It shouldn't be an issue. You should never have to count calories. There's a very nice PID feedback system built right in called "Hunger, Lack-of-Hunger" that manages it all perfectly. Like a well-tuned cruise control system it keeps us cruising right along at a more or less ideal weight.

Good to know that people will never get fat from eating to much. They'll just stop eating when they aren't hungry.

FYI, even Mark Sisson says you have to cut calories to lose weight. And he obviously has given some thought to the caloric content of food as well as it's nutritional content and influence on hormones and so forth.

... if you are still carting around a spare tire or not-so-lovable handle the “how much” still matters. Back to that grass-fed steak. While it’s healthy, none of us needs more than a few juicy ounces of it at a time (jeez, I’m making myself hungry here). Eat as healthy as you want to eat, but to lose weight, the old rule is still true: you must cut calories. Of course, certain foods will optimize your metabolism. Carbohydrates are a recipe for metabolic and immune disaster. But at the end of the day, calories do count. Here are some easy ways to cut back if you’ve got a few clingers:

10. Cut meat portions in half.

I’m a huge proponent of plenty of protein – at a minimum, 100 grams daily. But often, meat portions are too big. This is especially true in restaurants, but Carrie and I have noticed the prevalence of gargantuan steaks and step-aside-turkey chicken breasts at the market these days, too. (Attack of the bionic meat?) 3-6 ounces is plenty. Focus on source, flavor, and quality, not quantity.

9. Cut out the (hefty) toppings.

I love loading up my daily salad with plenty of ingredients – usually at least a dozen. But I choose low-calorie vegetables, and a good source of protein, rather than fried, crunchy, caloric toppings. Top your salads with veggies, not cheeses and nuts, if you are trying to lose weight. Top ‘em even if you aren’t, in fact.

8. Eliminate starchy vegetables.

If you are lean and healthy, things like yams and carrots are fine. But they do tend to have more calories than greens and cruciferous vegetables, so mind those starchy squashes and tubers if you want to lose a few pounds.

7. Cut legume portions in half.

Peas and other legumes like chickpeas and kidney beans are rich in vitamins and fiber. They also contain good vegetarian protein and healthy fats. But they’re very caloric. If you want to lose weight, cut those lentil, pea, and bean portions in half.

6. Eat only one snack daily.

Snacks can often be as caloric as a meal, particularly things like cheese and nuts. A handful is fine; anything more is a meal. Pay attention to the small bites you take throughout the day because they do add up more than you think.

5. Replace a meal with a protein shake.

If you really want to drop some serious weight (more than those last 5 or 10), replace a meal with a quality, dense shake. Mine packs a generous serving of protein and fiber for minimal calories and virtually no sugar.

4. Replace fruits with vegetables.

Fruits contain sugar, which is fine in limited amounts. But fruits are simply higher in calories than vegetables, something many folks don’t know. Replace those fruit snacks with vegetable snacks for equal – or better – nutrition and fewer calories.

3. Use less oil in cooking.

Try using a tablespoon of oil on a lower heat setting instead of liberal pours. I personally don’t watch my fat portions much, but my metabolism is set at a high level through years of training and living the Primal lifestyle. As your body adjusts, you’ll be able to eat more calories.

2. Watch the nut portions.

Nuts are an amazing nutrient source – protein, fat, fiber, vitamins galore. But they are incredibly high in calories. A serving size is a handful, not a pack.

1. Drink only water.

To really lose weight, make sure you aren’t drinking your calories! (Unless those calories are replacing a bulk meal.) Limit alcohol and eliminate dairy and juices.