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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?

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  • Nysportsred
    Nysportsred Posts: 222 Member
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    I was always told the following which have turned out, from what I have read, not to be true:
    • go over 2000 calories a day and you will gain weight each day
    • eating within 3 hours of bed turns directly in to fat and are not calories burned.
    • less than 4 days a week exercise will make you gain weight despite counting calories.
  • stormcrow2
    stormcrow2 Posts: 33 Member
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    theresejesu wrote: »
    CSARdiver wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    theresejesu wrote: »
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    Bry_Lander wrote: »
    JerSchmare wrote: »
    My unpopular opinion is that being fat has nothing to do with sugar.

    Not even proximately? Doesn't sugar tend to make food more delicious, increasing the tendency to consume greater quantities of it, and potentially resulting in consuming more calories than one burns?

    Sure, if you interpret it that way then being fat is also related to dietary fat, salt, spices, herbs, aromatics, maillard reaction, yeast, flavorings, packaging, coloring agents, texture agents, strategic shelf placement, peer pressure, and more. All of these make food more appealing, so singling out sugar makes no sense.

    So you're saying sugar DOES contribute to making one fat?

    There is only one thing that definitively causes someone to be overweight/obese/morbidly obese. Eating too many calories for their individual energy balance (CI > CO). These excess calories can come from foods which contain sugar (rarely do people eat straight table sugar but some insist it happens), but more often than not, the foods contain myriad other ingredients so the point is, why single out sugar? Still others have pointed out that they gained weight eating a lot of non-sugary foods, I myself am one of those. I got fat from eating a little too much, of a lot of different foods, and becoming much more sedentary, but don't have a particularly strong sweet tooth.

    Because sugar, and foods that easily convert to glucose are the main culprit in a western diet, not only in regards to caloric intake, but also how the body handles glucose, and that's part if why this can never be a simple calories in, calories out equation.

    The CICO method mechanizes our bodies. But our bodies aren't machines, not in such a simplistic sense. Thoughts, emotions, activities, hormonal profile, circadian rhythm, food choices (which can even switch on and off genes - epigenetics), the bacteria in our guts which affect our immune system and brain influencing how we feel and perceive and react to our world: all these affect our energy requirements, and thus our caloric needs.

    We are much more complicated than a simple CICO can account for. For some, it works great. For others, though, it doesn't, because it simply can't account for all those variables.

    What you choose to eat can affect how hard it is to keep to such a diet. Fructose, for instance, doesn't do a great job lowering the hormone ghrelin, which triggers feelings if hunger. So if you're eating a lot of fruit, you're probably going to still feel hungry, and so the cost in will power for you would be greater than someone who's ghrelin production turns off more easily.

    People look at what happens to them and then try to use their personal experience as a plumbline for everyone else without considering their individual experience is governed by a variety of factors they aren't even aware of, factors which vary from individual to individual. We are all subject to falling into this trap, and we probably all do from time to time. The danger is first to ourselves when we allow ourselves to become judgemental of others instead of understanding, and second, this can become damaging to the other.

    This is true, but people get mired in the irrelevant details as I suspect you are doing now.

    Pareto these variables: CI, CO, thoughts, emotions, activities, hormones, cricadian rhythm, macros, micros, epigenetics, microbiome, etc.

    CI and CO combined amount to >80% of impact.

    Hormones 5-10%

    The rest ~1%

    What variables are you going to prioritize?

    I have to disagree, I don't believe I'm getting mired in irrelevant details at all. How are these factors irrelevant?

    If these factors, which are constantly in flux, affect metabolism (which they do), then how does one know how many calories they are actually burning on any particular day or group of days? You would need to do lab tests and calculations. The best we can do is to approximate.

    For instance,

    "..a greater intake of sugar calories stimulates more insulin resistance and more fat storage than other types of calories do, even when the total calorie intake remains the same."

    The Salt Fix
    Author referencing study of which he was a co-author:
    Added Fructose: a principle driver of type 2 diabetes mellitus and it's consequences
    Mayo Clin. Proc 90 (3): 372-381.

    There is much more going on in our bodies than simple CICO can account for.[/quot


    Your quote mentions "more fat storage". The key question is how much more? 100%? 50%? 1%? .5%? you get the idea. "More" is useless and many studies like this show results way on the low end, but then get reported as if the difference is huge. (disclaimer: I did not look at the details of the quoted study specifically)
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    SiegfriedXXL wrote: »
    Bullying is such a strange topic for me. I was bullied mercilessly in school. I was the fat, short, effeminate kid all the way through school, with glasses, braces, and a bad haircut my mom gave me at home once a month. Every day was torture but I still went to school. I maintained a 4.0 and went off to college as soon as I could.

    I could have easily shut down but I didn't. I learned to draw a very detailed map of Hell, hand it to my hecklers, and tell them to begin their journey forthwith. And no, I'm not just talking about name calling. I was locked in rooms, thrown in trash cans, physically assaulted, even spit on. I didn't post about it on MySpace. Did I cry about it? Sure, every goddamn night. Did I write *kitten* emo poetry about it? Sure did. But I got through it.

    I never thought of offing myself. I never thought about blowing up the school. I just thought about surviving...and I did. So it kind of puzzles me when others can't. Maybe it's because social media makes everything so much more immediate. Maybe it's some other factor. I just tend to agree that there is something making people unable to shrug things off as easily and get on with their lives. We only have one after all.

    I didn't kill myself or commit violence either (obviously) -- and it goes without saying, I'd hope, that I consider killing other people inappropriate, period, especially but not only complete innocents.

    But to say -- as the other poster was -- that back in the day we just shrugged it off or weren't bothered by it, or it didn't hurt us, so everything was good then and is bad now (that people take it more seriously) seems to me totally inconsistent with what I saw and experienced back in the day and to how I saw people react.

    That I ended up a pretty successful person and got past it doesn't mean that people who don't are just weak and we are coddling them. It means that maybe I don't know all they were experiencing and that people are different.

    And people did kill themselves back when I was a kid too, so this idea that it's because kids are coddled now is nuts.

    I'm not saying I had it worse than anyone else, who could say (and I do think lots of people had it a lot worse than me). But I was not unbothered by it, which is why I brought it up; I don't think it was unimportant or good for me, and that the culture of the time (or my school or my family -- obv the latter had a lot to do with it) was such that I said nothing about it and felt like it must be because there was something wrong with me (and still have a suspicion of that in the back of my head such that I usually would never admit to anyone that it happened) is screwed up and not a sign of a better way, IMO. That was the point I was trying to make.

    For context, I'm 38. As a teenager, I had several friends who tried to kill themselves. Only one of them seemed to be related to social issues (that I know of), but the idea that children/teenagers are weaker today or point to some kind of "snowflaking" trend doesn't really resonate with me. And my peers and I didn't even have to worry about social media until we were older. It seems like young people today deal with a peer environment that is, in some ways, much more immersive and 24/7 than the ones I had to deal with when I was younger.

    I'm 55.

    I did try to kill myself.

    It had more to do with a horrible home situation than anything I experienced socially. I'd reached a breaking point that had been simmering for years.

    Sorry to hear about that, I hope things are better now.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Okay...
    *rolls up sleeves*

    I've got one that will go down like a lead balloon. MFP will have to introduce a "Hate" reaction just for this.

    I don't totally agree, but I don't totally disagree. (So no hate from me! And I sometimes enjoy a smoothie.)
    Smoothies. Shakes. Juices. The whole kerboodle that has turned eating a reasonably healthy diet that includes the recommended servings of fruit and veg each day into an aspirational lifestyle activity, requiring an ultra-expensive 1000W food processor or the frequenting of a "Juice Bar". Duration of activity? Oh, most commonly from January 1st to mid-February. Then people go back to their normal salad-dodging habits.

    Where I disagree is that while people DO often buy expensive equipment to do this, you don't need anything more than a standard blender for a smoothie or, of course, shake), and of course there are reasons to have nice blenders or food processors that don't require that one make smoothies with them.

    I do agree that just consuming vegetables (including greens) with your meal is a good thing, but one doesn't have to be opposed to that to enjoy an occasional smoothie as a snack or breakfast. (Shakes I don't think of as about vegetables, particularly, but more about protein power or post workout or some such, which I also don't think it necessary, but if one likes them why not.)
    Just get a grip and learn to eat lettuce leaves with an ordinary dinner all year round without needing them pureed into smithereens and disguised by agave syrup. If you stopped trying to put Kale into everything, you wouldn't even need the agave syrup.

    I've never owned or tasted agave syrup, and put kale in smoothies when I make them about 50% of the time. I don't find that it ruins the taste -- I like the taste of kale fine, it's the texture that bothers me in a salad and I'm too lazy to massage it. My reasoning is that I prefer spinach in a salad, so why waste it in a smoothie, and I get lots of kale in my CSA box and although I cook it too, if I make a smoothie it works there too.

    If I don't have a smoothie (which is mostly an occasional summer thing for me), I have vegetables in my breakfast anyway. Kale also goes well in an omelet, with some asparagus, mushrooms, and feta, for example.
    However, what annoys me most, the absolute tree-topper to it all, is the amount of poor saps I see here, and elsewhere, who think they can only successfully lose weight/start having a healthy diet if they start drinking fricking smoothies.

    Now, this, this, I 100% agree with, although I don't see that so much with smoothies (I do think smoothies are more about people finding that they taste good and often that people want to try eating breakfast -- which I'd agree is not necessary -- and don't feel like eating in the morning or, as you mentioned, are on the run). I mostly notice how popular green smoothies are because I see people consuming them on the L, or today in the elevator in my office building.

    But the green smoothie cleanse detox nonsense, blah, ugh. And I HAVE asked people why and gotten basically the admission that it's the only way they can imagine consuming veg (and they assume people not doing a smoothie cleanse don't consume veg), so like I said, I get where you are coming from to some degree, definitely.

    But I still enjoy an occasional smoothie breakfast and making up new combinations.
  • ccrdragon
    ccrdragon Posts: 3,365 Member
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    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Bry_Lander wrote: »
    Alatariel75 wrote: »
    My unpopular opinion is that generally, when people bemoan the fact that the world is too politically correct these days and they yearn for the good old days where people could say what they mean and not be taken to task for it, what they're really missing is the "good old days" when people like them were in a position where they could say whatever they pleased, and the people who they said it to were in a position where they were not able to speak up and tell them to *kitten* off.

    So if I’m interpreting this correctly, those who fondly recall the days before political correctness are basically just white males who would routinely say inappropriate racist or sexist remarks to victims who were powerless to respond? Seriously?

    There was never a time in the US when anybody could say what they wanted. People who are nostalgic for the days before "political correctness" may not specifically be white men who would routinely say racist or sexist things, but they're certainly forgetting (or don't know) that black men have been lynched for things they have said and abolitionists and advocates for birth control have gone to jail for certain types of speech. It's nostalgia for a very specific set of speech and it disregards the fact that not everyone had this freedom to say "whatever" in the past.

    The biggest problem that I see with 'political correctness' is that everything has devolved into the interpretation of what the listener thinks about ('about' being the key word in this diatribe) what was said and has nothing based on the actual meaning of what was said or the context in which it was said. To be specific, I have a co-worker who had a harassment complaint filed against him because he engaged in light-hearted banter during an elevator ride. He did not make sexual comments, disparage the woman or mock her in any way, but she didn't like him and used the encounter as a means of 'getting him'. He tried to fight the complaint, but guess what - because of the way that the rules have been written and interpreted by the EEOC, there was nothing that he could do and now he has a permanent black mark in his employment record.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,943 Member
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    lol, too far? Somebody woo-ed me. :lol:

    I was having a realistic moment. I mean, jeebus you have to be careful out there. Maybe my experience is because I live in a big city and people can get really touchy when they are crammed together for 12 hours a day.
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Okay...
    *rolls up sleeves*

    I've got one that will go down like a lead balloon. MFP will have to introduce a "Hate" reaction just for this.

    I don't totally agree, but I don't totally disagree. (So no hate from me! And I sometimes enjoy a smoothie.)
    Smoothies. Shakes. Juices. The whole kerboodle that has turned eating a reasonably healthy diet that includes the recommended servings of fruit and veg each day into an aspirational lifestyle activity, requiring an ultra-expensive 1000W food processor or the frequenting of a "Juice Bar". Duration of activity? Oh, most commonly from January 1st to mid-February. Then people go back to their normal salad-dodging habits.

    Where I disagree is that while people DO often buy expensive equipment to do this, you don't need anything more than a standard blender for a smoothie or, of course, shake), and of course there are reasons to have nice blenders or food processors that don't require that one make smoothies with them.

    I do agree that just consuming vegetables (including greens) with your meal is a good thing, but one doesn't have to be opposed to that to enjoy an occasional smoothie as a snack or breakfast. (Shakes I don't think of as about vegetables, particularly, but more about protein power or post workout or some such, which I also don't think it necessary, but if one likes them why not.)
    Just get a grip and learn to eat lettuce leaves with an ordinary dinner all year round without needing them pureed into smithereens and disguised by agave syrup. If you stopped trying to put Kale into everything, you wouldn't even need the agave syrup.

    I've never owned or tasted agave syrup, and put kale in smoothies when I make them about 50% of the time. I don't find that it ruins the taste -- I like the taste of kale fine, it's the texture that bothers me in a salad and I'm too lazy to massage it. My reasoning is that I prefer spinach in a salad, so why waste it in a smoothie, and I get lots of kale in my CSA box and although I cook it too, if I make a smoothie it works there too.

    If I don't have a smoothie (which is mostly an occasional summer thing for me), I have vegetables in my breakfast anyway. Kale also goes well in an omelet, with some asparagus, mushrooms, and feta, for example.
    However, what annoys me most, the absolute tree-topper to it all, is the amount of poor saps I see here, and elsewhere, who think they can only successfully lose weight/start having a healthy diet if they start drinking fricking smoothies.

    Now, this, this, I 100% agree with, although I don't see that so much with smoothies (I do think smoothies are more about people finding that they taste good and often that people want to try eating breakfast -- which I'd agree is not necessary -- and don't feel like eating in the morning or, as you mentioned, are on the run). I mostly notice how popular green smoothies are because I see people consuming them on the L, or today in the elevator in my office building.

    But the green smoothie cleanse detox nonsense, blah, ugh. And I HAVE asked people why and gotten basically the admission that it's the only way they can imagine consuming veg (and they assume people not doing a smoothie cleanse don't consume veg), so like I said, I get where you are coming from to some degree, definitely.

    But I still enjoy an occasional smoothie breakfast and making up new combinations.

    I like smoothies sometimes myself just because I like them. They're good on days when I either don't have much of an appetite, it's very hot, or I don't have many calories.

    I agree with the main thrust of Helium's post that they're not some magic requirement for dieting, though.

    I've just been a fan of them for a long time. I started making them in some form AGES ago as a milkshake hack. I used to blend frozen strawberries and skim milk in the blender for a low cal, low fat milkshake way back in the 80's before smoothies were even a thing.

    I still see the smoothies I make as a milkshake hack. And I've loved milkshakes since I was a kid.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    HeliumIsNoble wrote: »
    Okay...
    *rolls up sleeves*

    I've got one that will go down like a lead balloon. MFP will have to introduce a "Hate" reaction just for this.

    I don't totally agree, but I don't totally disagree. (So no hate from me! And I sometimes enjoy a smoothie.)
    Smoothies. Shakes. Juices. The whole kerboodle that has turned eating a reasonably healthy diet that includes the recommended servings of fruit and veg each day into an aspirational lifestyle activity, requiring an ultra-expensive 1000W food processor or the frequenting of a "Juice Bar". Duration of activity? Oh, most commonly from January 1st to mid-February. Then people go back to their normal salad-dodging habits.

    Where I disagree is that while people DO often buy expensive equipment to do this, you don't need anything more than a standard blender for a smoothie or, of course, shake), and of course there are reasons to have nice blenders or food processors that don't require that one make smoothies with them.

    I do agree that just consuming vegetables (including greens) with your meal is a good thing, but one doesn't have to be opposed to that to enjoy an occasional smoothie as a snack or breakfast. (Shakes I don't think of as about vegetables, particularly, but more about protein power or post workout or some such, which I also don't think it necessary, but if one likes them why not.)
    Just get a grip and learn to eat lettuce leaves with an ordinary dinner all year round without needing them pureed into smithereens and disguised by agave syrup. If you stopped trying to put Kale into everything, you wouldn't even need the agave syrup.

    I've never owned or tasted agave syrup, and put kale in smoothies when I make them about 50% of the time. I don't find that it ruins the taste -- I like the taste of kale fine, it's the texture that bothers me in a salad and I'm too lazy to massage it. My reasoning is that I prefer spinach in a salad, so why waste it in a smoothie, and I get lots of kale in my CSA box and although I cook it too, if I make a smoothie it works there too.

    If I don't have a smoothie (which is mostly an occasional summer thing for me), I have vegetables in my breakfast anyway. Kale also goes well in an omelet, with some asparagus, mushrooms, and feta, for example.
    However, what annoys me most, the absolute tree-topper to it all, is the amount of poor saps I see here, and elsewhere, who think they can only successfully lose weight/start having a healthy diet if they start drinking fricking smoothies.

    Now, this, this, I 100% agree with, although I don't see that so much with smoothies (I do think smoothies are more about people finding that they taste good and often that people want to try eating breakfast -- which I'd agree is not necessary -- and don't feel like eating in the morning or, as you mentioned, are on the run). I mostly notice how popular green smoothies are because I see people consuming them on the L, or today in the elevator in my office building.

    But the green smoothie cleanse detox nonsense, blah, ugh. And I HAVE asked people why and gotten basically the admission that it's the only way they can imagine consuming veg (and they assume people not doing a smoothie cleanse don't consume veg), so like I said, I get where you are coming from to some degree, definitely.

    But I still enjoy an occasional smoothie breakfast and making up new combinations.

    I like smoothies sometimes myself just because I like them. They're good on days when I either don't have much of an appetite, it's very hot, or I don't have many calories.

    I agree with the main thrust of Helium's post that they're not some magic requirement for dieting, though.

    I've just been a fan of them for a long time. I started making them in some form AGES ago as a milkshake hack. I used to blend frozen strawberries and skim milk in the blender for a low cal, low fat milkshake way back in the 80's before smoothies were even a thing.

    I still see the smoothies I make as a milkshake hack. And I've loved milkshakes since I was a kid.

    Also a slushy hack. Back when I was a kid we'd blend berries and ice in the summer.
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