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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?
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accidentalpancake wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »The difficulty is that we are attempting to interpret the meaning of a term "fattening" to multiple communities.
One being the lay person - those generally ignorant of the issues surrounding weight management.
The other being the average MFP user - while many may disagree on the particulars there is a minimum foundation of the variables impacting weight management.
Having this foundational knowledge does lead one to challenge so called "established" thinking and makes terms such as fattening very situational dependent. There is a great deal of bias in this as the majority of MFP users are more focused on deficit; however this term is going to have a different meaning to those focusing on gaining.
Based upon this thread alone, I'd strongly disagree with the bolded. Reading most of the other threads on MFP would only strengthen that stance. MFP users, as a whole, are just as enraptured with woo, fearmongering and pseudoscience as the uneducated lay person. Cleanses/detoxes. Juice fasts. Apple cider vinegar. Green tea. MLM scams. Sugar/carb demonization. The magickal, miraculous wizardries of keto and IF. Military diet. Gaining slabs of muscle while eating 1000 calories of lettuce and doing 4 hours of cardio per day. Et cetera ad nauseum.
I will, however, agree with the above if we establish "minimum foundation" as being on a level with the derpy weight loss/diet articles found in magazines and the garbage in Netflix "documentaries".
Now there's one that's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Is this just lazy language, or do people think that the documentaries they see on Netflix are original content (the vast majority are not)?
It would be like referring to movies as AMC movies or television shows as Comcast shows.
Note the "in" before Netflix. They mean the category of Documentaries on Netflix, not that they are Netflix produced.
The "in" doesn't modify in that way at all.
"in" is the location of the information, which is followed by the source of said information. It would work as "documentaries in/on Netflix," but not as "in Netflix documentaries."
I would understand "Netflix documentaries" as Vintage Feline said, documentaries on Netflix.
That doesn't change the fact that it is lazy, from a linguistic perspective. I know that is the intent as well, but it doesn't make the structuring of it correct. Saying "Netflix documentaries" assigns ownership/responsibility to Netflix at a level past content delivery.
Do you feel the same about "bar fight"?10 -
accidentalpancake wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »The difficulty is that we are attempting to interpret the meaning of a term "fattening" to multiple communities.
One being the lay person - those generally ignorant of the issues surrounding weight management.
The other being the average MFP user - while many may disagree on the particulars there is a minimum foundation of the variables impacting weight management.
Having this foundational knowledge does lead one to challenge so called "established" thinking and makes terms such as fattening very situational dependent. There is a great deal of bias in this as the majority of MFP users are more focused on deficit; however this term is going to have a different meaning to those focusing on gaining.
Based upon this thread alone, I'd strongly disagree with the bolded. Reading most of the other threads on MFP would only strengthen that stance. MFP users, as a whole, are just as enraptured with woo, fearmongering and pseudoscience as the uneducated lay person. Cleanses/detoxes. Juice fasts. Apple cider vinegar. Green tea. MLM scams. Sugar/carb demonization. The magickal, miraculous wizardries of keto and IF. Military diet. Gaining slabs of muscle while eating 1000 calories of lettuce and doing 4 hours of cardio per day. Et cetera ad nauseum.
I will, however, agree with the above if we establish "minimum foundation" as being on a level with the derpy weight loss/diet articles found in magazines and the garbage in Netflix "documentaries".
Now there's one that's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Is this just lazy language, or do people think that the documentaries they see on Netflix are original content (the vast majority are not)?
It would be like referring to movies as AMC movies or television shows as Comcast shows.
Note the "in" before Netflix. They mean the category of Documentaries on Netflix, not that they are Netflix produced.
The "in" doesn't modify in that way at all.
"in" is the location of the information, which is followed by the source of said information. It would work as "documentaries in/on Netflix," but not as "in Netflix documentaries."
I would understand "Netflix documentaries" as Vintage Feline said, documentaries on Netflix.
That doesn't change the fact that it is lazy, from a linguistic perspective. I know that is the intent as well, but it doesn't make the structuring of it correct. Saying "Netflix documentaries" assigns ownership/responsibility to Netflix at a level past content delivery.
I think when you account for the fact that anything produced by netflix has "Netflix Original" splashed all over its cover image and that they only relatively recently started producing their own content, you're taking pedantry to new levels.6 -
accidentalpancake wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »The difficulty is that we are attempting to interpret the meaning of a term "fattening" to multiple communities.
One being the lay person - those generally ignorant of the issues surrounding weight management.
The other being the average MFP user - while many may disagree on the particulars there is a minimum foundation of the variables impacting weight management.
Having this foundational knowledge does lead one to challenge so called "established" thinking and makes terms such as fattening very situational dependent. There is a great deal of bias in this as the majority of MFP users are more focused on deficit; however this term is going to have a different meaning to those focusing on gaining.
Based upon this thread alone, I'd strongly disagree with the bolded. Reading most of the other threads on MFP would only strengthen that stance. MFP users, as a whole, are just as enraptured with woo, fearmongering and pseudoscience as the uneducated lay person. Cleanses/detoxes. Juice fasts. Apple cider vinegar. Green tea. MLM scams. Sugar/carb demonization. The magickal, miraculous wizardries of keto and IF. Military diet. Gaining slabs of muscle while eating 1000 calories of lettuce and doing 4 hours of cardio per day. Et cetera ad nauseum.
I will, however, agree with the above if we establish "minimum foundation" as being on a level with the derpy weight loss/diet articles found in magazines and the garbage in Netflix "documentaries".
Now there's one that's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Is this just lazy language, or do people think that the documentaries they see on Netflix are original content (the vast majority are not)?
It would be like referring to movies as AMC movies or television shows as Comcast shows.
Note the "in" before Netflix. They mean the category of Documentaries on Netflix, not that they are Netflix produced.
The "in" doesn't modify in that way at all.
"in" is the location of the information, which is followed by the source of said information. It would work as "documentaries in/on Netflix," but not as "in Netflix documentaries."
I would understand "Netflix documentaries" as Vintage Feline said, documentaries on Netflix.
That doesn't change the fact that it is lazy, from a linguistic perspective. I know that is the intent as well, but it doesn't make the structuring of it correct. Saying "Netflix documentaries" assigns ownership/responsibility to Netflix at a level past content delivery.
To me it acknowledges that people are watching them because they are on Netflix/being promoted by Netflix. The timing tracks extremely closely.1 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I have struggled with emotional eating. I still think claiming that some kind of "epidemic" of emotional eating (which probably is common, sure) is why the obesity rate is higher now is odd. I also think it's really odd to go to emotional eating from the posts on experiencing pleasure from food.
IME, emotional eating isn't about enjoying food at all. It's about self comfort and stuffing feelings. To claim it's about appreciating food strikes me as rather like thinking that alcohol abuse is fundamentally about being an oenophile or enjoying the taste of craft beers.
Humans are good at using all kinds of things to dysfunctionally deal with feelings, sure, and I doubt the tendency to do that has changed much over time. (I used to do it with food even as a teen, when I wasn't fat at all, so it also does not necessarily result in obesity.)
Why people are obese now is because food is really easily available and low cost (including the time of preparation), it tends to be around a lot and there are few cultural restrictions on eating, servings and the calorie costs of the most easily available foods are generally up, and people don't really notice, and activity that is required in daily life today is really low and for some people not easy to get without making an effort. Culturally hedonic eating is somewhat encouraged and mindless eating is common.
Indeed, I suspect mindless eating is way more responsible for obesity than emotional eating. Despite my tendency to the latter I think mindless eating was more of a culprit for me, even.
I don't get the impression from the average MFP poster who is struggling that being a foodie or enjoyment of a thought-out evening indulgence is the main stumbling block. Seems like more of them feel guilt and shame about food, eating, and almost don't really seem to enjoy food, to struggle with appreciating more than a really narrow range of foods, sometimes.
So going to "finding pleasure in an evening snack" = "emotional eating" = "the cause of obesity!" strikes me as, well, again, kind of odd.
I would say a fair part of mindless eating is out of boredom which I would consider an emotion.
I would disagree. Boredom eating is seeing food as "something to do" and not about addressing difficult feelings or self comfort, IMO.
Point remains that none of this has anything to do with the comments about desserts.
The PhDs in Psychology would say boredom is an emotion:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/07-08/dull-moment.aspx
Excerpt:
"Even though boredom is very common, there is a lack of knowledge about it," says Wijnand van Tilburg, a psychologist at the University of Southampton. "There hasn't been much research about how it affects people on an everyday basis."
Now that's changing, as scientists have begun to take a closer look at this underappreciated emotion. The results of their research are anything but dull.
Boredom is a universal experience, yet until recently researchers didn't have a go-to definition of the condition. Psychologist John Eastwood, PhD, of York University in Toronto, decided that was a good place to start. He and his colleagues scoured the scientific literature for theories of boredom and tried to extract the common elements. Then they interviewed hundreds of people about what it feels like to experience that tedious state.
They concluded that boredom is best described in terms of attention. A bored person doesn't just have nothing to do. He or she wants to be stimulated, but is unable, for whatever reason, to connect with his or her environment — a state Eastwood describes as an "unengaged mind" (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012).
"In a nutshell, it boiled down to boredom being the unfulfilled desire for satisfying activity," he says.
Sure, boredom is an emotion.
That doesn't make mindless eating, which is sometimes eating when one is bored, the same thing as eating to self-comfort or stuff down feelings.
Mindless and boredom eating is something that happens because food is there, I'd bet. Or because you are hanging out with someone and want something to do and getting a bite seems easy.
Also, and I repeat, don't see what this has to do with the dessert discussion.
I would even argue that mindless eating doesn't always happen out of boredom. Sometimes it's just a habit. People who watch TV for entertainment and eat at the same time are often not bored, just used to eating while watching TV. Same for eating while doing anything or just because something casual not always related to deeply held emotions triggers the eating like an ad, heat, cold, a certain time of the day, certain activity, a candy bowl on the table, and yes, boredom. It's a whole different category on its own with different representatijons and thought process. It does not involve feelings of guilt, anxiety, and self hate. It's mindless.
ETA: Re: why people don't do something about being fat
What's the most common thing you hear when someone is overweight? "I have a slow metabolism"
They just resign to that "fact" and decide they can't be bothered to starve themselves to lose weight because that should be the only way someone with a slow metabolism can lose. And yes, I agree, people not doing something about gain does not in any way mean that they got fat by eating emotionally.
Also, people tend to conform, unthinkingly, to perceived behavioral norms. People around you graze-eat, you graze-eat. Friends get the mega XL slushee, you get the mega XL slushee. "Everyone" brings cupcakes to work on their birthday, and "everyone" eats one. Etc. That's been building for decades.
I'm not at heart a corporate conspiracy fan at all, but one very clever thing advertisers have done since my 1950s/60s childhood is paint the picture that everyone, especially happy, pretty people, are always eating and drinking. They do it on the commercials, they do it on the TV shows.
Cars didn't have 12 cupholders when i was a child - most didn't even have one - and not because we were all balancing ubiquitous sugary mega drink cups on our knees in the car. Drive-up food happened, we got commercials with cute families buying happy food for cheap (and easy), and cars got cupholders. For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
And that's not even getting into the influence of automation - at work, in home, in play - on the average person's NEAT over the last 50 years.
Unpopular opinion: People who think obesity is mostly about emotional eating are telling us something deeply repressed about their own attitudes toward food and eating.
26 -
kristen8000 wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »kristen8000 wrote: »
I don't believe you can be obese and healthy.
The man in the picture under my name was obese when that photo was taken.
Ok, maybe I didn't word that right. I realize that people can be considered obese and be WAY healthier than me, but what I meant was you can't be overfat and still be healthy. Sorry - I guess i needed to clear that up.
He was overfat too..
My point is healthy is a nebulous term. so is fit5 -
Unpopular opinion: People who think obesity is mostly about emotional eating are telling us something deeply repressed about their own attitudes toward food and eating.
I think this can be said about most people with strong inflexible opinions about any given topic. Projection abounds.9 -
accidentalpancake wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »The difficulty is that we are attempting to interpret the meaning of a term "fattening" to multiple communities.
One being the lay person - those generally ignorant of the issues surrounding weight management.
The other being the average MFP user - while many may disagree on the particulars there is a minimum foundation of the variables impacting weight management.
Having this foundational knowledge does lead one to challenge so called "established" thinking and makes terms such as fattening very situational dependent. There is a great deal of bias in this as the majority of MFP users are more focused on deficit; however this term is going to have a different meaning to those focusing on gaining.
Based upon this thread alone, I'd strongly disagree with the bolded. Reading most of the other threads on MFP would only strengthen that stance. MFP users, as a whole, are just as enraptured with woo, fearmongering and pseudoscience as the uneducated lay person. Cleanses/detoxes. Juice fasts. Apple cider vinegar. Green tea. MLM scams. Sugar/carb demonization. The magickal, miraculous wizardries of keto and IF. Military diet. Gaining slabs of muscle while eating 1000 calories of lettuce and doing 4 hours of cardio per day. Et cetera ad nauseum.
I will, however, agree with the above if we establish "minimum foundation" as being on a level with the derpy weight loss/diet articles found in magazines and the garbage in Netflix "documentaries".
Now there's one that's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Is this just lazy language, or do people think that the documentaries they see on Netflix are original content (the vast majority are not)?
It would be like referring to movies as AMC movies or television shows as Comcast shows.
Note the "in" before Netflix. They mean the category of Documentaries on Netflix, not that they are Netflix produced.
The "in" doesn't modify in that way at all.
"in" is the location of the information, which is followed by the source of said information. It would work as "documentaries in/on Netflix," but not as "in Netflix documentaries."
Parse it however you like; it was mainly intended in a derisive/tongue in cheek sense. Similar to if I had said "being on a level with the weight loss/diet 'facts' in/on the Dr. Oz show".
For the official record, I'm fully aware that Netflix doesn't produce their own content. Nor does any other network/broadcast entity, for the most part.
You're missing out! Netflix has some great original content - I just wouldn't make life or health decisions based on anything I've seen
6 -
accidentalpancake wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »accidentalpancake wrote: »The difficulty is that we are attempting to interpret the meaning of a term "fattening" to multiple communities.
One being the lay person - those generally ignorant of the issues surrounding weight management.
The other being the average MFP user - while many may disagree on the particulars there is a minimum foundation of the variables impacting weight management.
Having this foundational knowledge does lead one to challenge so called "established" thinking and makes terms such as fattening very situational dependent. There is a great deal of bias in this as the majority of MFP users are more focused on deficit; however this term is going to have a different meaning to those focusing on gaining.
Based upon this thread alone, I'd strongly disagree with the bolded. Reading most of the other threads on MFP would only strengthen that stance. MFP users, as a whole, are just as enraptured with woo, fearmongering and pseudoscience as the uneducated lay person. Cleanses/detoxes. Juice fasts. Apple cider vinegar. Green tea. MLM scams. Sugar/carb demonization. The magickal, miraculous wizardries of keto and IF. Military diet. Gaining slabs of muscle while eating 1000 calories of lettuce and doing 4 hours of cardio per day. Et cetera ad nauseum.
I will, however, agree with the above if we establish "minimum foundation" as being on a level with the derpy weight loss/diet articles found in magazines and the garbage in Netflix "documentaries".
Now there's one that's like nails on a chalkboard for me.
Is this just lazy language, or do people think that the documentaries they see on Netflix are original content (the vast majority are not)?
It would be like referring to movies as AMC movies or television shows as Comcast shows.
Note the "in" before Netflix. They mean the category of Documentaries on Netflix, not that they are Netflix produced.
The "in" doesn't modify in that way at all.
"in" is the location of the information, which is followed by the source of said information. It would work as "documentaries in/on Netflix," but not as "in Netflix documentaries."
Parse it however you like; it was mainly intended in a derisive/tongue in cheek sense. Similar to if I had said "being on a level with the weight loss/diet 'facts' in/on the Dr. Oz show".
For the official record, I'm fully aware that Netflix doesn't produce their own content. Nor does any other network/broadcast entity, for the most part.
You're missing out! Netflix has some great original content - I just wouldn't make life or health decisions based on anything I've seen
And Stranger Things. Never forget Stranger Things.13 -
I don't know if anyone else has posted this (not about to sift through 102 pages of the thread), but I believe that non-GMO and Organic isn't healthier 99% of the time.7
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byustrongman wrote: »oh man i was wrong, this is the dumbest topic
and yes, i've read all of this thread.
Agreed.0 -
byustrongman wrote: »oh man i was wrong, this is the dumbest topic
and yes, i've read all of this thread.
Maybe we're all on here bored-posting instead of bored-eating?15 -
byustrongman wrote: »oh man i was wrong, this is the dumbest topic
and yes, i've read all of this thread.
I have too, and I agree. I also can't tell you how many times I've started thinking about the "I want to buy an argument" Monty Python sketch, where they argue about what an argument is.
10 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »Apparently believing frozen meals like Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice are NOT high in sodium is an unpopular opinion. Do you consider 23-24% of your daily intake high in sodium? I don't. It's one meal. 1/3 of my day.
But is it 1/3 of your daily calories?
Usually pretty close on the days I eat one.
Wow, really? Aren't they all still 300 calories or less?
Nope
not sure what you are eating but it isn't lean cuisines or healthy choice steamers...mine are all under 200....
Just bought 5 of them, Lean Cuisine brand (on sale 5/$10 so I stock up). Calories range from 340 to 380 each.1 -
It's not just women's clothes. I used to wear a medium 20 years ago while in college. And I was considered a normal weight for the time. At one point as a teen, my parents were even concerned I was getting a little pudgy.For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
Fast forward to today, and some clothes labled "small" are too big. And I have to find slim fit dress shirts or they are very baggy. Old Navy is notoriously bad.
In addition, this past holiday, some of my family expressed concern about how thin I was and if something was wrong.
I'm the exact same weight I was 20 years ago... I haven't changed, but everyone else sure has.
8 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I have struggled with emotional eating. I still think claiming that some kind of "epidemic" of emotional eating (which probably is common, sure) is why the obesity rate is higher now is odd. I also think it's really odd to go to emotional eating from the posts on experiencing pleasure from food.
IME, emotional eating isn't about enjoying food at all. It's about self comfort and stuffing feelings. To claim it's about appreciating food strikes me as rather like thinking that alcohol abuse is fundamentally about being an oenophile or enjoying the taste of craft beers.
Humans are good at using all kinds of things to dysfunctionally deal with feelings, sure, and I doubt the tendency to do that has changed much over time. (I used to do it with food even as a teen, when I wasn't fat at all, so it also does not necessarily result in obesity.)
Why people are obese now is because food is really easily available and low cost (including the time of preparation), it tends to be around a lot and there are few cultural restrictions on eating, servings and the calorie costs of the most easily available foods are generally up, and people don't really notice, and activity that is required in daily life today is really low and for some people not easy to get without making an effort. Culturally hedonic eating is somewhat encouraged and mindless eating is common.
Indeed, I suspect mindless eating is way more responsible for obesity than emotional eating. Despite my tendency to the latter I think mindless eating was more of a culprit for me, even.
I don't get the impression from the average MFP poster who is struggling that being a foodie or enjoyment of a thought-out evening indulgence is the main stumbling block. Seems like more of them feel guilt and shame about food, eating, and almost don't really seem to enjoy food, to struggle with appreciating more than a really narrow range of foods, sometimes.
So going to "finding pleasure in an evening snack" = "emotional eating" = "the cause of obesity!" strikes me as, well, again, kind of odd.
I would say a fair part of mindless eating is out of boredom which I would consider an emotion.
I would disagree. Boredom eating is seeing food as "something to do" and not about addressing difficult feelings or self comfort, IMO.
Point remains that none of this has anything to do with the comments about desserts.
The PhDs in Psychology would say boredom is an emotion:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/07-08/dull-moment.aspx
Excerpt:
"Even though boredom is very common, there is a lack of knowledge about it," says Wijnand van Tilburg, a psychologist at the University of Southampton. "There hasn't been much research about how it affects people on an everyday basis."
Now that's changing, as scientists have begun to take a closer look at this underappreciated emotion. The results of their research are anything but dull.
Boredom is a universal experience, yet until recently researchers didn't have a go-to definition of the condition. Psychologist John Eastwood, PhD, of York University in Toronto, decided that was a good place to start. He and his colleagues scoured the scientific literature for theories of boredom and tried to extract the common elements. Then they interviewed hundreds of people about what it feels like to experience that tedious state.
They concluded that boredom is best described in terms of attention. A bored person doesn't just have nothing to do. He or she wants to be stimulated, but is unable, for whatever reason, to connect with his or her environment — a state Eastwood describes as an "unengaged mind" (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012).
"In a nutshell, it boiled down to boredom being the unfulfilled desire for satisfying activity," he says.
Sure, boredom is an emotion.
That doesn't make mindless eating, which is sometimes eating when one is bored, the same thing as eating to self-comfort or stuff down feelings.
Mindless and boredom eating is something that happens because food is there, I'd bet. Or because you are hanging out with someone and want something to do and getting a bite seems easy.
Also, and I repeat, don't see what this has to do with the dessert discussion.
I would even argue that mindless eating doesn't always happen out of boredom. Sometimes it's just a habit. People who watch TV for entertainment and eat at the same time are often not bored, just used to eating while watching TV. Same for eating while doing anything or just because something casual not always related to deeply held emotions triggers the eating like an ad, heat, cold, a certain time of the day, certain activity, a candy bowl on the table, and yes, boredom. It's a whole different category on its own with different representatijons and thought process. It does not involve feelings of guilt, anxiety, and self hate. It's mindless.
ETA: Re: why people don't do something about being fat
What's the most common thing you hear when someone is overweight? "I have a slow metabolism"
They just resign to that "fact" and decide they can't be bothered to starve themselves to lose weight because that should be the only way someone with a slow metabolism can lose. And yes, I agree, people not doing something about gain does not in any way mean that they got fat by eating emotionally.
Also, people tend to conform, unthinkingly, to perceived behavioral norms. People around you graze-eat, you graze-eat. Friends get the mega XL slushee, you get the mega XL slushee. "Everyone" brings cupcakes to work on their birthday, and "everyone" eats one. Etc. That's been building for decades.
I'm not at heart a corporate conspiracy fan at all, but one very clever thing advertisers have done since my 1950s/60s childhood is paint the picture that everyone, especially happy, pretty people, are always eating and drinking. They do it on the commercials, they do it on the TV shows.
Cars didn't have 12 cupholders when i was a child - most didn't even have one - and not because we were all balancing ubiquitous sugary mega drink cups on our knees in the car. Drive-up food happened, we got commercials with cute families buying happy food for cheap (and easy), and cars got cupholders. For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
And that's not even getting into the influence of automation - at work, in home, in play - on the average person's NEAT over the last 50 years.
Unpopular opinion: People who think obesity is mostly about emotional eating are telling us something deeply repressed about their own attitudes toward food and eating.
Yes, all of this.5 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I have struggled with emotional eating. I still think claiming that some kind of "epidemic" of emotional eating (which probably is common, sure) is why the obesity rate is higher now is odd. I also think it's really odd to go to emotional eating from the posts on experiencing pleasure from food.
IME, emotional eating isn't about enjoying food at all. It's about self comfort and stuffing feelings. To claim it's about appreciating food strikes me as rather like thinking that alcohol abuse is fundamentally about being an oenophile or enjoying the taste of craft beers.
Humans are good at using all kinds of things to dysfunctionally deal with feelings, sure, and I doubt the tendency to do that has changed much over time. (I used to do it with food even as a teen, when I wasn't fat at all, so it also does not necessarily result in obesity.)
Why people are obese now is because food is really easily available and low cost (including the time of preparation), it tends to be around a lot and there are few cultural restrictions on eating, servings and the calorie costs of the most easily available foods are generally up, and people don't really notice, and activity that is required in daily life today is really low and for some people not easy to get without making an effort. Culturally hedonic eating is somewhat encouraged and mindless eating is common.
Indeed, I suspect mindless eating is way more responsible for obesity than emotional eating. Despite my tendency to the latter I think mindless eating was more of a culprit for me, even.
I don't get the impression from the average MFP poster who is struggling that being a foodie or enjoyment of a thought-out evening indulgence is the main stumbling block. Seems like more of them feel guilt and shame about food, eating, and almost don't really seem to enjoy food, to struggle with appreciating more than a really narrow range of foods, sometimes.
So going to "finding pleasure in an evening snack" = "emotional eating" = "the cause of obesity!" strikes me as, well, again, kind of odd.
I would say a fair part of mindless eating is out of boredom which I would consider an emotion.
I would disagree. Boredom eating is seeing food as "something to do" and not about addressing difficult feelings or self comfort, IMO.
Point remains that none of this has anything to do with the comments about desserts.
The PhDs in Psychology would say boredom is an emotion:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/07-08/dull-moment.aspx
Excerpt:
"Even though boredom is very common, there is a lack of knowledge about it," says Wijnand van Tilburg, a psychologist at the University of Southampton. "There hasn't been much research about how it affects people on an everyday basis."
Now that's changing, as scientists have begun to take a closer look at this underappreciated emotion. The results of their research are anything but dull.
Boredom is a universal experience, yet until recently researchers didn't have a go-to definition of the condition. Psychologist John Eastwood, PhD, of York University in Toronto, decided that was a good place to start. He and his colleagues scoured the scientific literature for theories of boredom and tried to extract the common elements. Then they interviewed hundreds of people about what it feels like to experience that tedious state.
They concluded that boredom is best described in terms of attention. A bored person doesn't just have nothing to do. He or she wants to be stimulated, but is unable, for whatever reason, to connect with his or her environment — a state Eastwood describes as an "unengaged mind" (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012).
"In a nutshell, it boiled down to boredom being the unfulfilled desire for satisfying activity," he says.
Sure, boredom is an emotion.
That doesn't make mindless eating, which is sometimes eating when one is bored, the same thing as eating to self-comfort or stuff down feelings.
Mindless and boredom eating is something that happens because food is there, I'd bet. Or because you are hanging out with someone and want something to do and getting a bite seems easy.
Also, and I repeat, don't see what this has to do with the dessert discussion.
I would even argue that mindless eating doesn't always happen out of boredom. Sometimes it's just a habit. People who watch TV for entertainment and eat at the same time are often not bored, just used to eating while watching TV. Same for eating while doing anything or just because something casual not always related to deeply held emotions triggers the eating like an ad, heat, cold, a certain time of the day, certain activity, a candy bowl on the table, and yes, boredom. It's a whole different category on its own with different representatijons and thought process. It does not involve feelings of guilt, anxiety, and self hate. It's mindless.
ETA: Re: why people don't do something about being fat
What's the most common thing you hear when someone is overweight? "I have a slow metabolism"
They just resign to that "fact" and decide they can't be bothered to starve themselves to lose weight because that should be the only way someone with a slow metabolism can lose. And yes, I agree, people not doing something about gain does not in any way mean that they got fat by eating emotionally.
Also, people tend to conform, unthinkingly, to perceived behavioral norms. People around you graze-eat, you graze-eat. Friends get the mega XL slushee, you get the mega XL slushee. "Everyone" brings cupcakes to work on their birthday, and "everyone" eats one. Etc. That's been building for decades.
I'm not at heart a corporate conspiracy fan at all, but one very clever thing advertisers have done since my 1950s/60s childhood is paint the picture that everyone, especially happy, pretty people, are always eating and drinking. They do it on the commercials, they do it on the TV shows.
Cars didn't have 12 cupholders when i was a child - most didn't even have one - and not because we were all balancing ubiquitous sugary mega drink cups on our knees in the car. Drive-up food happened, we got commercials with cute families buying happy food for cheap (and easy), and cars got cupholders. For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
And that's not even getting into the influence of automation - at work, in home, in play - on the average person's NEAT over the last 50 years.
Unpopular opinion: People who think obesity is mostly about emotional eating are telling us something deeply repressed about their own attitudes toward food and eating.
This deeply repressed attitude that people like me allegedly have about food and eating has afflicted me great with eating habits, a healthy weight, and an excellent level of fitness
10 -
The_Enginerd wrote: »
It's not just women's clothes. I used to wear a medium 20 years ago while in college. And I was considered a normal weight for the time. At one point as a teen, my parents were even concerned I was getting a little pudgy.For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
Fast forward to today, and some clothes labled "small" are too big. And I have to find slim fit dress shirts or they are very baggy. Old Navy is notoriously bad.
In addition, this past holiday, some of my family expressed concern about how thin I was and if something was wrong.
I'm the exact same weight I was 20 years ago... I haven't changed, but everyone else sure has.
Back when I met my wife - 21 years ago (holy *puppy*, just now realized we've known each other that long) and 35-40 lbs lighter @ 140-150 - I wore an extra large for some shirts, large for others. I've always had a deeper chest cavity than one might expect just looking at me from the front. Now, I wear medium for many shirts, large for others. And the larges almost always have extra room.
So, yeah. I feel you.3 -
Bry_Lander wrote: »This deeply repressed attitude that people like me allegedly have about food and eating has afflicted me great eating habits, a healthy weight, and an excellent level of fitness
Is your shovel not worn out by now?
17 -
The_Enginerd wrote: »
It's not just women's clothes. I used to wear a medium 20 years ago while in college. And I was considered a normal weight for the time. At one point as a teen, my parents were even concerned I was getting a little pudgy.For women, vanity sizing has helped disguise the slow creep of obesity. Your jeans wear out, you buy a new pair in the same size, and - ah! - they're just a little more comfy than the old pair. And you're about the same size as so many of the people around you, right? And just as active ("who's got time?!?")?
Fast forward to today, and some clothes labled "small" are too big. And I have to find slim fit dress shirts or they are very baggy. Old Navy is notoriously bad.
In addition, this past holiday, some of my family expressed concern about how thin I was and if something was wrong.
I'm the exact same weight I was 20 years ago... I haven't changed, but everyone else sure has.
I so get the clothing size adjustment thing.
I have been the same weight most of my life, except my 5 year blip, and always fit really nicely into an adult woman's small in my middle years.
Now, back to my 'constant' weight, I drown in them, and have to shop in junior stores. Fair enough, I am a sprightly old bird with a youthful attitude to life, but having to resort to clothing for a 14-24yo when you are edging on 64, can be a little awkward at times.
As far as family are concerned, my sisters both refer to me as the little one (don't lose any more weight h).
I am the weight I alway was (they were lighter), they have both put on 15-20 lbs.
Cheers, h.4 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »This deeply repressed attitude that people like me allegedly have about food and eating has afflicted me great eating habits, a healthy weight, and an excellent level of fitness
Is your shovel not worn out by now?
Apparently some people come to the "What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?" forum to criticize people with unpopular opinions.15
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