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A huge number of people in America are becoming obese. Many or most of them wish they were skinnier, as being a normal weight usually makes someone much more sexually attractive, whether they be male or female. Furthermore, doing the activities of daily living is harder if a person is fat, and of course there are the numerous health problems.
Well, the simple and obvious solution to being fat is to reduce the calories consumed and increase the calories expended. Nearly all people fail miserably in self administered diet and exercise programs. Every study I've seen shows that long term weight loss is pretty rare.
Logically, it follows that the brain creates enormously strong urges to eat and to not perform physical exertion if not necessary, since both urges would have survival value in our ancestral environment. (being a lazy overeater if you have enough food saved up to do so is evidently the best way to survive a few thousand years ago. Not moving around conserves calories and wear on your joints, and overeating means you eat food before it spoils)
So blaming fat people for not having enough "willpower" is somewhat misguided, since it also takes enormous willpower not to breathe. (although a few people can force themselves not to breathe until the point of passing out)
Still, there's an obvious solution. Have a third party provide the policing and the willpower. Have a third party prepare all the meals the person wanting to lose weight needs, in frozen individual portions, given 5 or 6 times a day with plenty of nutrients and decent flavor. Have a third party make the person exercise several times a week. (called a personal trainer)
And it SHOULD work. One would imagine that this would be a lot cheaper than a gastric bypass surgery. If the trainer were paid $40/hour * 3 a week, that would cost $6240 a year. If prepackaged meals with about 1500 daily calories cost $10/day over the cost of normal food, that would cost $3650 a year. Pretty expensive, and probably difficult for most Americans to afford.
I know such programs exist. Do they usually work? Is cost the reason they are not commonly performed? (although, if a gastric bypass costs $20,000 and only is effectively for 2 years on average, then the $10,000 a year for such a program seems reasonable)
I came up with this topic after reading this article : http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/21/obesity.discrimination/index.html?hpt=Sbin . In the comments section, I noticed lots of people claiming that they were still fat and yet they claimed to eat only "1250 calories of healthy food a day, with ample exercise". Numerous people claim this. They blame being fat on "bad genes". Yet, as far as I know, this is against the laws of thermodynamics. A 200 lb person, even if they have a thyroid problem, is probably going to use at least 1500-2000 kilocalories of energy per day just staying alive and occaionally walking. If a person isn't using about that much energy, they are a corpse.
Anyways, I'd very much like to hear what you all think on the matter. It's the biggest preventable health problem in America, and many of our future patients would live much better lives (with the ability to pursue more things and have better sex!) if they could lose their excess fat.
I'm sorry if I'm posting here while being ultimately pretty ignorant on the subject. However, the impression I get is that "nothing works", except for a surgical hackjob that permanently destroys a chunk of a healthy person's digestive system. So I independently sketched together the logical solution to the problem of obesity, and want to know why this solution doesn't work.
Well, the simple and obvious solution to being fat is to reduce the calories consumed and increase the calories expended. Nearly all people fail miserably in self administered diet and exercise programs. Every study I've seen shows that long term weight loss is pretty rare.
Logically, it follows that the brain creates enormously strong urges to eat and to not perform physical exertion if not necessary, since both urges would have survival value in our ancestral environment. (being a lazy overeater if you have enough food saved up to do so is evidently the best way to survive a few thousand years ago. Not moving around conserves calories and wear on your joints, and overeating means you eat food before it spoils)
So blaming fat people for not having enough "willpower" is somewhat misguided, since it also takes enormous willpower not to breathe. (although a few people can force themselves not to breathe until the point of passing out)
Still, there's an obvious solution. Have a third party provide the policing and the willpower. Have a third party prepare all the meals the person wanting to lose weight needs, in frozen individual portions, given 5 or 6 times a day with plenty of nutrients and decent flavor. Have a third party make the person exercise several times a week. (called a personal trainer)
And it SHOULD work. One would imagine that this would be a lot cheaper than a gastric bypass surgery. If the trainer were paid $40/hour * 3 a week, that would cost $6240 a year. If prepackaged meals with about 1500 daily calories cost $10/day over the cost of normal food, that would cost $3650 a year. Pretty expensive, and probably difficult for most Americans to afford.
I know such programs exist. Do they usually work? Is cost the reason they are not commonly performed? (although, if a gastric bypass costs $20,000 and only is effectively for 2 years on average, then the $10,000 a year for such a program seems reasonable)
I came up with this topic after reading this article : http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/21/obesity.discrimination/index.html?hpt=Sbin . In the comments section, I noticed lots of people claiming that they were still fat and yet they claimed to eat only "1250 calories of healthy food a day, with ample exercise". Numerous people claim this. They blame being fat on "bad genes". Yet, as far as I know, this is against the laws of thermodynamics. A 200 lb person, even if they have a thyroid problem, is probably going to use at least 1500-2000 kilocalories of energy per day just staying alive and occaionally walking. If a person isn't using about that much energy, they are a corpse.
Anyways, I'd very much like to hear what you all think on the matter. It's the biggest preventable health problem in America, and many of our future patients would live much better lives (with the ability to pursue more things and have better sex!) if they could lose their excess fat.
I'm sorry if I'm posting here while being ultimately pretty ignorant on the subject. However, the impression I get is that "nothing works", except for a surgical hackjob that permanently destroys a chunk of a healthy person's digestive system. So I independently sketched together the logical solution to the problem of obesity, and want to know why this solution doesn't work.
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