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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?

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  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    Yeah. I didn't really care about my weight until my health suffered and my doctor told me that weight-loss was the single best thing I could do to manage my condition. So, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but weightloss and avoidance of lymphedema flare-ups are pretty well intertwined at this point. Health is the goal and weightloss is the process.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    Why does what someone eats matter so much to folks against IIFYM?

  • gothchiq
    gothchiq Posts: 4,590 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I think most objections to "eat what you want within your calories" assume, weirdly, that people won't want to eat a balanced diet or will want to eat a nutrient poor or even all junk food diet and won't care how the diet makes him or her feel in deciding what he or she wants to do.

    I often (perhaps unfairly) wonder why the person is making those assumptions -- would that person actually WANT to eat a low nutrient diet and not eat vegetables, etc? Or does that person just look down on others and assume they aren't sensible?

    I can provide at least somewhat of an answer. Because of people that have been observed IRL doing exactly that. I have been baffled to watch men and women of various ages and places in life, not just younguns, decide that it was perfectly okay to eat ONLY fast food as long as it was in their calorie limit. A couple months go by and these people are explaining to the doctor how awful they feel, and is it a virus? Doctor does bloodwork and says WTF did you eat? And that's where I'm facepalming and saying I TRIED TO TELL YOU when they are relaying all this to me as though it's surprising.
  • MJ2victory
    MJ2victory Posts: 97 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    ok I'm ready to weigh in on this (hahaha I crack myself up). Here are my unpopular opinions:

    1. Weighing daily is unhealthy. (not to say it isn't tempting)
    2. Weight loss should not be your objective. It's a side affect of making healthier choices.
    3. Mental health is just as important as physical health (if not more).
    4. If you lose weight bc you hate yourself, you will still hate yourself at your goal weight and you WILL gain it back.

    Sometimes, losing weight (in and of itself) is the best thing a person can do for their health.

    not if they're going to immediately gain it back because they didn't deal with their relationship with food and the emotional baggage that may have caused them to gain the weight.

    Who says they didn't deal with those issues as a means to the goal of losing weight?

    like I said in my original post: my opinion is that weight loss should be a byproduct, not the goal. The goal is to feel better, be more physically able, not eat emotionally, love yourself, etc. Weight is just your relationship with gravity. If you make lifestyle changes, you may lose weight, but it's about the weakest measurement of health.

    Obesity is detrimental to physical health. It's hardly a weak measurement of health. If a person is obese and they have an unhealthy relationship with food, then yes they need to deal with that unhealthy relationship in order to achieve the goal of overcoming obesity because obesity kills.

    What a ridiculous oversimplification. There is a correlation between obesity and some illnesses. And do you remember what was talked about in high school about the dangers of assuming causation vs correlation?
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    gothchiq wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I think most objections to "eat what you want within your calories" assume, weirdly, that people won't want to eat a balanced diet or will want to eat a nutrient poor or even all junk food diet and won't care how the diet makes him or her feel in deciding what he or she wants to do.

    I often (perhaps unfairly) wonder why the person is making those assumptions -- would that person actually WANT to eat a low nutrient diet and not eat vegetables, etc? Or does that person just look down on others and assume they aren't sensible?

    I can provide at least somewhat of an answer. Because of people that have been observed IRL doing exactly that. I have been baffled to watch men and women of various ages and places in life, not just younguns, decide that it was perfectly okay to eat ONLY fast food as long as it was in their calorie limit. A couple months go by and these people are explaining to the doctor how awful they feel, and is it a virus? Doctor does bloodwork and says WTF did you eat? And that's where I'm facepalming and saying I TRIED TO TELL YOU when they are relaying all this to me as though it's surprising.

    So what? That's their perogative. This stuff happens to people that eat supposedly healthy food too.

    Why is fast food always the devil?
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    Chef_Barbell wrote: »
    Why does what someone eats matter so much to folks against IIFYM?

    I think it was H.L. Mencken who described Puritianism as the "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is happy."

    I think there's a hefty dollop of that going on sometimes. When people are making nutritional changes they think of as sacrifices, it's upsetting to think that other people are meeting their goals without making those sacrifices.

    (Quote may not be exact, I'm going from memory here).

    This is money right here!
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited June 2017
    gothchiq wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I think most objections to "eat what you want within your calories" assume, weirdly, that people won't want to eat a balanced diet or will want to eat a nutrient poor or even all junk food diet and won't care how the diet makes him or her feel in deciding what he or she wants to do.

    I often (perhaps unfairly) wonder why the person is making those assumptions -- would that person actually WANT to eat a low nutrient diet and not eat vegetables, etc? Or does that person just look down on others and assume they aren't sensible?

    I can provide at least somewhat of an answer. Because of people that have been observed IRL doing exactly that. I have been baffled to watch men and women of various ages and places in life, not just younguns, decide that it was perfectly okay to eat ONLY fast food as long as it was in their calorie limit. A couple months go by and these people are explaining to the doctor how awful they feel, and is it a virus? Doctor does bloodwork and says WTF did you eat? And that's where I'm facepalming and saying I TRIED TO TELL YOU when they are relaying all this to me as though it's surprising.

    Yeah, I am aware of some people who eat badly too, although in my day to day life it's much less common than what I have learned of from MFP (I seem to be among people who all think eating vegetables is important and do, despite the stats for the US as a whole). I have known exactly one person who decided to eat primarily fast food, and she knew it wasn't ideal, but at that point in her life was willing to take the risk. (She lost a bunch of weight eating mostly fast food and eventually started cooking some and eating more vegetables.)

    But more to the point that some people CHOOSE to act irresponsibly doesn't mean that they think that it makes no difference (most of the time I think it's more "bad things won't happen to me" or "it takes a long time, I'll change before then" -- things I've certainly seen with problem drinkers I know). It certainly doesn't mean that anyone HERE is saying nutrition does not matter or that that's a common view.

    As I said upthread, I think everyone KNOWS generally what a healthy diet is and that they should care about nutrition. Some people just don't, or don't right now, but still want to lose weight. (Heck, I cared about eating a nutritious diet for years and didn't care about losing weight, so that might be even more questionable from a health perspective. I've done other things I knew were not ideal, also. Humans are like that. I don't think it means people don't understand that vegetables are good for them and they should eat some.)
  • MJ2victory
    MJ2victory Posts: 97 Member
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    estherdragonbat wrote: »
    Yeah. I didn't really care about my weight until my health suffered and my doctor told me that weight-loss was the single best thing I could do to manage my condition. So, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but weightloss and avoidance of lymphedema flare-ups are pretty well intertwined at this point. Health is the goal and weightloss is the process.

    I don't agree with your doctor

    Are you a HAES proponent?

    Because I can tell you, as someone who undertook weight loss specifically because reaching a healthy body weight is recommended to manage my particular medical condition, it is totally FALSE that weight is not tied to health in many medical conditions.

    In fact, although I am a healthy weight, my goal is to get to the very low end of BMI for optimal management of my medical condition.

    I have two forms of arthritis. Arthritis is not a weight-neutral disease. Reaching and maintaining a healthy body weight is the best thing you can do for it, much as it was the same thing estherdragon could do for lymphedema. And yes, weight loss is the best thing you can do for that condition.

    as I've said from the beginning: my opinion is that the best thing you can do is make positive lifestyle changes like eating more nutrient dense foods, improving your emotional relationship with foods, using exercise to increase your ability level, etc. I feel that weight loss is a natural byproduct of these choices but should not be the focus.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    stevencloser wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Rivers2k wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Rivers2k wrote: »
    I finally have a place to say this :)Not all calories are equal. Calories from a hot fudge brownie sundae is going to affect your body differently than equivalent amount of calories from broccoli and a nice piece of steak.

    Calories is often misused to mean food, but that's not what it means. It's a unit of measurement for energy.

    OBVIOUSLY (and it's not an unpopular opinion, everyone agrees), a sundae is different in many ways from a steak or from broccoli. They have different macros, different calories per volume and serving, are not identically satiating (although that differs person to person), have different micros, may trigger a specific person to eat more, may be tasty or not for a person, so on and so on.

    NONE of this means, however, that the calories are not equal, as a calorie is just energy, a specific unit thereof.

    There's not really such a thing as a "calorie of hot fudge sundae" or a "steak calorie." The steak and the broccoli and the sundae provide your body with a bunch of things, that your body breaks down, including calories. Your body cannot tell that a particular calorie is from a particular food.

    I think -- and this may or may not be an unpopular opinion, again -- that most people who claim that not all calories are equal are confusing "calorie" with "food" or using it as a metaphor for food without realizing it's just a metaphor.

    I also think that most people who complain that their view that foods are different are unpopular are misreading what other people say, and I am always confused about how they manage to do this after all the many, many explanations. I think it's just that they cannot get their head around the fact that calorie means something other than "unit of a specific food" and indeed, that using calorie to mean food is an imprecise, metaphorical usage and not a particularly helpful one.

    You also shouldn't assert something hyperbolic like getting death threats when that's not at all true, it's defamatory and harms discussion. (In the off chance I'm wrong here, you should alert MFP, as someone is mentally screwed up and it has nothing to do with views on nutrition.)

    I am aware of what a calorie is. Just saying 100 calories of hot fudge is going to have a different affect on someone from 100 calories of steak.

    No, you are continuing to misuse "calorie." A hot fudge sundae (even one that contains just 100 calories) is going to have different effects on the body and contribute different micros and macros than a steak (or a piece that contains 100 calories). BUT there's really no such thing as a steak calorie or a sundae calorie.
    But the CICO crowd says nope its all the same.

    No, no one says this. You are misunderstanding, and I really don't see how it's possible.

    Now, 2000 calories of a generally nutritious diet that including adequate protein and 2000 calories of a diet low in micros that contains adequate protein might well have the same effect on weight loss, all else equal (although it likely will not be), but acknowledging that -- which is what CICO says -- is NOT the same thing as saying different foods don't have different qualities and affects. You have made that bit up as a strawman to argue against.

    The thought about a 100 calorie piece of steak makes me sad. Such a small, fragile thing.

    Heh, I almost said something similar!
  • MJ2victory
    MJ2victory Posts: 97 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    VintageFeline wrote: »
    MJ2victory wrote: »
    estherdragonbat wrote: »
    Yeah. I didn't really care about my weight until my health suffered and my doctor told me that weight-loss was the single best thing I could do to manage my condition. So, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but weightloss and avoidance of lymphedema flare-ups are pretty well intertwined at this point. Health is the goal and weightloss is the process.

    I don't agree with your doctor

    Imma go with the opinion of the doctor who sees an array of people of all weights and fitness and illnesses day in day out.

    cool it's almost like this is a forum thread specifically for people to share their opinions.

    It's on the debate board. If you don't want to debate your opinions then this might be the wrong section for you. Why don't people get this?

    If you took the time to look over my posts, I've said the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
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