Been reading a thread about Britain’s ‘obesity epidemic’, and it’s amazing how many thin people know how to fix it.

People clamber over themselves to wax lyrical about how we should encourage more exercise (we should), and how fast food joints should be held to account (they should), but the loudest voices never talk about it being a mental health issue.

I’m a fat fuck, I know I should exercise more and eat better. I did that for a year once and lost 30kg. Then I put it all back on again.

I know *exactly* how to lose weight, but it’s really. fucking. hard. Like, the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. You have to spend *months* or *years* depriving yourself of the things that you’ve learned bring you a shard of happiness.

But say you manage that and you lose loads of weight and everyone is complementing you on how good you look. Then what?

Then you have to spend every waking moment being aware of the things you just can’t have, because you can’t be trusted.

But you do let yourself have the odd treat. And before you know it you’re right back where you started and you have to do it all over again.

There are no short cuts, no easy ways to lose weight. Weight Watchers is a lie, Slimming World is a lie, Lighter Life is a lie. They’re all businesses that are built on their customers never being thin enough.

You can do exercise, but it can’t be enough.

I love riding a bike, but I’m damned if I can afford a new one right now, so I sure as shit can’t afford a gym membership.

So I walk places where I can. That walking is the only thing that’s keeping me at 140kg. But wherever I walk, I walk past shops selling all manner of food that I can’t have.

Weight loss is damn near impossible to do.

Weight loss surgery is a lie. It doesn’t work. And if it does, it comes with life-altering side effects.

The key is to help parents to keep their kids healthy.

That’s literally the only way to fix it.

Pay parents well enough to buy decent food, and make their work hours short enough that they have time and energy to prepare good quality food.

That’s it. That’s how you fix obesity.

@DJDarren If you have ever been infected with human adenoviruses 5 or 26 (if I recall the numbers correctly), your body has been reprogrammed epigenetically to preferentially store fat instead of increasing activity or energy levels. There's also an avian adenovirus--that is partially zoonotic--that makes chickens fatter while starving.

Part of the obesity epidemic is, in fact, driven by transmissible pathogens.

@DJDarren Bonus in that those viruses are currently in use for gene therapy as they cause no visible symptoms of sickness. No sinus congestion. No cough or sneeze. You just get fatter x% more easily for the rest of your life.

@raulinbonn As per my thread, I know *how* to lose weight. The theory is simple: CICO.

Thing is, being a fat person means that I have thought processes around food that a thin person doesn’t have.

I can count my calories all I like, but I can only do that for a few weeks before I get sick of having to do something that most people don’t.

And yeah, according to my watch I did 14.5k steps today. That’s a little higher than normal for me, but not far off.

Weight gain is a mental health issue.

@DJDarren While counting calories you learn a lot about food, and after only a few days you might start changing what you pick in the grocery store. You really don't need to do it forever. Only till you learn enough about food and start choosing better, eating better, and cooking better.

@raulinbonn Again, as per my thread, I know about nutrition, I know about calories. I know how to cook. I’m a fucking *great* cook. The enchiladas I knocked up tonight were banging.

I’ve counted calories (more times than I can count), I’ve given up sugar for a whole damn year, I’ve gone keto, I’ve done Slimming World.

And I’m currently the heaviest I’ve ever been.

It’s. Not. Normal. To. Have. To. Micromanage. Your. Diet.

And that’s the problem. Having to do that is not sustainable.

@DJDarren If you count calories and burn more than you eat, losing weight is inevitable. You are possibly not counting accurately if you do it and have not lost weight.

Btw the mentality should rather not be just to "lose weight," but to actually acquire new habits that will inevitably change the whole way you handle all your food intake and physical activities.

You want to think about achieving and maintaining an ideal weight, so acquiring a healthy lifestyle should be the goal. Thinking about just losing weight is truly the wrong mindset.

@raulinbonn Have you ever weighed more than 130kg? Have you ever eaten a whole box of ice creams in the car then thrown the box in a bin before you got home so you didn’t have to explain your shame?

Then I don’t think we’re coming at this from the same perspective, my friend.

@DJDarren Yes maybe not. That does sound more like a mental health issue. But still let me ask you:

- Did you use any specific app to accurately track your caloric intake?

- Did you use a scale and weight absolutely everything you eat, absolutely every day for at least a few weeks?

You don't need to do it forever, but again, you do need to do it for long enough (I'd say a few weeks) till you learn accurately how many carbs, protein, and specially fats are included in the stuff (and the amounts) you typically eat.

@DJDarren I used to buy some delicious chicken pasta with curry that came in a package. You would think chicken, pasta, and some curry sauce ought to be a pretty balanced meal. Well, using Yazio i realized that thing was a fat/oil bomb, it had triple the amounts of calories from fats as it did from proteins and carbs. You do start to learn a lot about every food you eat if you track calories accurately for some time. And you suddenly start making different decisions once back in the grocery store.

@DJDarren Something else are minor changes that can have a large, sustainable, and very beneficial health impact:

- Don't ever drink soda drinks ever again. Drink at least 2 liters of water absolutely every day. Some times you might think you are hungry, and in fact you might be just dehydrated.

- In fact do not even drink any fruit juice. Eat whole fruits, or make shakes with them, but don't filter them.

- Avoid eating absolutely anything that has HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).

- I'd also avoid anything with sucralose or sweeteners.

@raulinbonn @DJDarren I can track every single calorie in or out for around 3 months, with an NHS sponsored programme sending me motivational tips weekly, and lose around 10kg. I did that last year.

I lost 30 kg in 2002, and 40kg in 2009/10 - those two were slimming world. There's another 10kg loss calorie counting with Noom somewhere in there.

I'm currently 15kg under my max weight, but 25kg overweight, and gaining. Tell me again how fucking easy this is.

@lnr @DJDarren it is easy if you adopt new healthy habits associated with keeping that deficit till achieving your ideal weight. Then you stop the deficit, you just maintain your acquired new eating and cooking habits to maintain your ideal weight.

So again, the mindset and goal should not be to just lose weight. The goal should be achieve that new healthy lifestyle you have to want. Losing weight and then maintaining it will not really be the goal, but an inevitable side effect.

@raulinbonn @DJDarren I'm just waiting for you to start lecturing people about doing more exercise when you don't know how much exercise they do already. No wait, you already did that.

Maybe a healthy lifestyle which includes being slim is something *you* find easy. I'm honestly happy for you if it is. But can you please accept that it's not easy for everyone. If it were then we'd all be thin.

@lnr @DJDarren More exercise is not the solution, but a sustained caloric deficit is. That's eating less calories, or burning more, or both of course. Eating less helps. Exercising more helps. But neither one guarantees a sustained caloric deficit.

Btw I also burned ~10kg in 3 months last year. After that I achieved my ideal weight, and have maintained it since. Granted I keep using the calorie tracking app, the activity tracking app, and I weigh pretty much everything I eat on a little scale before eating it to feed the app properly. But it's not because of that that I've maintained my weight. It's because I eat and cook a lot differently now, given what I've learned about food calories, carb, protein, and fat contents from using the apps.

@DJDarren
In case you might have not checked my pinned posts, here is a healthy and very balanced breakfast recommendation:

https://social.treehouse.systems/@raulinbonn/111391620449345421

Yazio has a bunch of meal and cooking recommendations, but this one which stuck with me is not even from Yazio but from a Youtube video.

@lnr @DJDarren Eleanor, what happened exactly in these spikes?

@lnr @DJDarren And why it didn't work like the green line here?

@raulinbonn @DJDarren the point, your head, whoosh.

(and before you start doing the same to me I lost 15kg already this year, track every calorie using an app, go to the gym 6 times a week. Yeah bro, I know. But learn to listen too.)

@DJDarren as some of the replies to this thread indicate, people are so dead set on giving you a fucking lecture as if you don't know what to do they don't want to embrace the key point here which is that obesity is 100% a mental health issue.

And I speak from the position of somebody who has lost 15kg this year, I got the gym 6 days a week, I am super dedicated, yada yada.

That's not the point, the point is that I am addicted to shitty food, I love shitty food, I am like a recovering 'foodoholic' and can never be trusted around food generally ever, like ever. I have to maintain some kind of strict control forever or I'll pile it back on.

For me, I'm sure you can relate, the issue is food is one of the best drugs going, best ways of dealing with stress/anxiety/etc.

The only way I am making changes really is by having a totally bloody minded mentality at the gym and using the desire to gain muscle/lose fat to reveal the muscle to cope with giving up that drug/being strict.

Without that I'd just fuck it again, and maybe I still will I can't guarantee it. And hey I can look forward to bulking phases right? ;)

Thin people giving you long patronising lessons about caloric deficit while not grasping the mental health aspect is one of the most irritating aspects of this whole thing, fuck me haha.

@DJDarren oh and talk to me about how problems with spending go hand in hand with this shit (I've still not sorted THAT one out!)

@ljs This is where my problem lies; I have ADHD, my impulse control is poor to start with. Add in an addiction to shitty food and my life is just day after day of shame around eating.

Not ‘crying into a tub of ice cream at 6am’ shame, but “should I be using that much olive oil to fry onions?” shame.

Dieting, losing weight, takes that and amplifies it by a million. And you have to maintain that day after day after day for a year to see any noticeable ‘improvements’.

It’s fucking exhausting.

@ljs And yeah, I hate the gym. It’s boring exercise for its own sake, and I’ve never been able to switch my stupid brain into a place where it’s easy to go.

It doesn’t matter how helpful it is, I have to muster up the executive function to go to a place that I don’t wish to be. Two weeks, maximum, before I fall off the wagon.

@DJDarren yeah and that's before you consider the fact that your weight naturally jumps up and down, so you'll see gains and it going flat even if you're in a calorie deficit.

The maths for this is really simple - a sensible, healthy weight loss regime is -.5kg a week. Water weighs 1kg a litre. A delta on water in your system can easily be +/- 1kg or more.

The psychological impact of seeing it go up or stay level when you're doing everything right is just horrific.

And yeah for me, my impulse control is dogshit too. I did both the crying into ice cream (actually for me, my weakness was more donner kebabs + chips, mate oh shit...) + the worrying about small things.

But yeah definitely binging when you're stressed or anxious or down or whatever makes it fucking hard to quit, because bye bye crutch and now what?

I won't give any advice because I can't, plus it's annoying.

It's so obviously a mental health issue and, other than clever pharma that might help, possibly, that is the way things need to go to help with this.

@DJDarren yeah again I'm not a dick I'm not recommending anything or going on about the gym, it's just what's working for me + by accident too.

My wife insisted on me going, my weight + shit food addiction was hurting the marriage, and I still couldn't get myself out of it (again, this is why I feel framing it as addiction really fits).

I didn't like it at first, had been seeing a PT each week for a while before that her small studio gym thing, she was excellent but was a drag + dreaded it.

Anyway once I was in the gym regularly I just started liking the weights side more, saw some results (I was overeating so accidentally bulking) + I just started enjoying it more + more.

BTW this isn't advice or some annoying shit going on about what you should do, literally just my experience, I fell into it, and now it's sort of my 'replacement addiction'.

But at all times I know I could fall off at any moment... :)