Ignoring that extreme the questions maybe different: How many hours does a median person have free from work, commute, and sleep? How much time must be spent managing exercise and diet to achieve fitness?
I think if you took the time to answer those questions for the median or modal non-impoverished person in the world you might find that fitness is actually quite difficult to achieve.
It seems really hard in the US.
Eating healthier requires very little extra time: perhaps 2-3 hours a week for shopping and meal prep.
- making a salad take 5 minutes.
- baking 10 meals worth of chicken takes 30-45 minutes, with about 5-10 minutes of actual prep time.
- baking a few meals worth of salmon, or some other fish is about the same as chicken.
- cutting up an apple takes 1-2 minutes. Bananas, peaches are ready to go, almost no prep required.
- steaming fresh broccoli takes 3-5 min of prep... and about 15-20 minutes total.
- Equally important is making small decisions to avoid or limit less healthy foods, which requires no time at all and often saves us money [that we can spend on healthier foods instead].
Exercising: 30-60 minutes a day, most days, is ideal but anything is better than nothing. A morning and evening 20 minute walk is great place to start (and can be so relaxing). If a person spends time on Hacker News, they could instead allocate that time to exercise. There are free 15 minutes yoga videos on Youtube. A set of push ups requires 60 seconds. Sometimes I do body weight squats at my desk at work (especially during Teams calls, camera off of course).
Sleep: get at least 7 hours of sleep a night... ideally starting to bed before 11pm. more sleep gives us more energy to put towards being awesome during the day and more energy for exercise and doing the extra work to eat better.
I think almost everyone can set aside 6-10 hours in their week towards building their health. It is a matter of priorities... a person's health should be one of their top priorities.
Not going to waste my time providing sources to remedy your ignorance. You are more than capable of doing this research yourself.
For others open to listening to why it's often out of reach: Outside the go-to "motivation" type discussion gravitation (and, keep in mind, not everyone can just 'motivate themselves past their addictions' in the first place or they wouldn't be addictions) it is also disproportionately hard for those struggling in other ways of life (financially, mentally, physically/genetically). Some of these can be cascaded effects, like support systems (e.g.not everyone's partner is willing or able to go all in on it like above). Others can be that it is medically not as easy for some people to lose weight at a given intake amount which makes it just that much harder.
Most people would like very VERY much to be fit. That most still aren't fit should be a good indicator it's out of most's reach to "just eat less" independently. All this said as a person who is not overweight themselves but has been around many people in different situations, abilities, and luck that have left them unable to be so as well.
You can't outrun thermodynamics. But your body will change its efficiency.
You’d still be eating less, but retaining more weight. Why? Because your metabolism slows down significantly if you don’t fuel it, and that makes it harder to lose weight, not easier.
Most things in life are not binary, and are affected by more than just a single choice.
Moreover, have you ever tried to work out at 450 lbs? No? It is an immense effort, often literally impossible for most people at that weight, and the best they can manage is a walk around the block before their cardio can’t keep up.
What then?
See above, where I reminded people (which includes you) that things are rarely binary.
Otherwise, perhaps let people get healthy instead of admonishing them to get healthy the way you think they should, which turns out to be… the same way they have always tried and has not worked.
The rest of my argument still holds if you change that.
Your contention of “most of them actually are very capable of just eating more healthy diets and exercising more” is a nonsensical assumption, based on no data, and a prejudiced assumption that they are lazy and haven’t tried, ever.
> What we actually need to do is un-fuck our food supply and encourage healthier lifestyles...
Great. We should do that. I completely agree. It will definitely help our kids.
That won’t help anyone get healthy in this lifetime. It takes too long. Obesity would kill you first.
But you’re right, that’s probably better than taking a medication that is clearly helping people change their habits and get healthy, because you feel it would be better if they didn’t have the problem in the first place.
Nicotine gum and patches help curb smoking and change people’s habits. Why? Why not just force everyone to quit cold turkey, like my dad did? Should we just change the way we talk about smoking and produce fewer cigarettes? Sure.
But nicotine patches and gums saved lives and helped people quit that had never been able to before them, and not for a lack of trying.
GLP-1 meds are an aid. The alternative isn’t fixing the food supply, but dying from obesity.
What, precisely, does this mean? If medication is appropriately prescribed, by well-educated and well-trained doctors who have, upon actually meeting the patient which neither of us has done, decided that this patient could benefit from said medication... why is that bad?
39.6 percent of U.S. adults are obese. If all of them were prescribed GLP-1 meds (which would definitely never be true, for lots of reasons), and if all of them got healthy because of it... that's bad? Simply because they used medication to help?
Clarify for me, please, why medication is somehow not allowed to be used as a tool to fight illness or injury. Because people should somehow be "stronger" and able to fight it more on our own, despite not having been able to in the past?
Mass medication is an undesirable state of the world because it doesn’t address the root of any problem. It simply negates or masks some of the effects. The Ozempic situation is just like how kids are now being prescribed Adderall in the millions, when really the problem is they are just given iPads too much and fed unhealthy food that causes ADHD. Adderall doesn’t address the cause. Then you end up with a slave population that needs this medication to function. which is only good for the pharma companies making money on those meds.
Source? Because so far it seems like you and others really want it to have long-term negative effects, but that the evidence for that is made up and entirely in your head, to date.
> The Ozempic situation is just like how kids are now being prescribed Adderall in the millions, when really the problem is they are just given iPads too much and fed unhealthy food that causes ADHD. Adderall doesn’t address the cause.
Ah, finally, the mask comes off. Your issue is with people getting help for disorders and illnesses they have, period.
The trope that ADHD is caused by iPads is nonsense. ADHD is caused by an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex. Plenty of kids actually have it. I did, for sure. I wish I had found out what ADHD was, instead of holding my preconception about what it was, much earlier in life. I didn’t need that struggle against a thing I could never beat, because your brain controls everything you do.
> Then you end up with a slave population that needs this medication to function. which is only good for the pharma companies making money on those meds.
Do you? Show me a “slave population” that “needs adderall to function.”
I agree we created many of these problems (food being unhealthy, for example).
I also agree fixing many of them would be good.
I don’t agree that that is the only way to help people, and I don’t agree with the implication that “all pharma is bad,” because I don’t make outlandish binary statements like that.
Seems like something you could lead with instead of moronic gut reactions...
That’s not the argument you are making, and that is one I’d agree with.
> Most people using Ozempic have never tried multi-day fasting as an alternative.
Source? This is an assumption that requires data, because it is intuitively not true; and anecdotally, it is also not true.
This is purely a prejudiced assumption.
> There are plenty of ways to lose weight that don't require taking medicine that might be fucking up your digestive system long-term.
Or it might not, and hasn’t, at any meaningful scale, since 2005. Seems like you really want it to, though, and that seems like more a problem with you than it or them.
Until next time we meet on the internet. :salute:
Taking a pill doesn't.
That's why it will always be out of reach of some people.
We all can make healthier decision about what food we put into our bodies (a lot could be done to make our food supply healthier, as well). I find I have to be more strict about eating right as I get older to maintain my health.
I feel like folks saying 'fitness' isn't in reach [for most/many of us] is a cop out. This is anecdotal, but i know people who have lost 100+ lbs in their 40's and 50's and completely turned their life around; I know people who have reversed Type-2 diabetes through diet and exercise. These people have busy lives with a lot of responsibility... some of these people live in city areas where access to gyms or outdoor spaces for walking, etc. is not convenient.
I have a few doctors and other medical professionals in my family... knowing what I know, I am 'almost terrified' of becoming metabolically unhealthy and overweight. Many of the maladies that afflict us are metabolic disorders (in whole or in part) due to the long term effects of poor diet, lack of exercise & quality sleep (high stress doesn't help either). Poor metabolic health tremendously increases risk of almost every disease and malady: diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, dementia & Alzhiemer's, many cancers, stroke, depression and other mental illnesses, sleep apnea, susceptibility to infectious disease, etc. Poor metabolic health also indirectly leads to higher likelihood of issues causing chronic pain: e.g., herniated discs in the spine, ankle/knee/hip problems, migraine headaches.
I'm glad Ozempic exists but it is not a cure... it is an aid towards building a healthier life. Use Ozempic as a tool, by all means!!, to start your journey and get yourself into a better situation physically. But please use that good start to pursue the 'best/healthy you'... do it for yourself.
Aren’t you are ignoring the way western society influences behavior? eg lack of walkability of suburbs, massive price difference between fresh and processed foods, constant advertising of junk food & alcohol.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
> constant advertising of junk food & alcohol.
Nobody is forcing you to eat those.
No, I think force feeding junk food is pretty rare but that seems like a straw man.
Consider children. Their brains are not fully developed and they have little agency in determining the food they have access to. Childhood obesity is on the rise. So blame the children’s choices?
Ok, sure, blame the parents. I agree of course it is the parents responsibility, but the cards are often stacked against parents by big corporations with government subsidies (in the us).
It’s really weird to me to argue that this is completely a problem at the individual level and not a social one—and I see no other way to interpret your comment.
Been there. It’s always bad parenting. I had to fix shitton of issues myself, because of idiot parents.
At the same time, we are all still individuals. We agency to make life decisions. I generally don't subscribe to the notion that people are helpless even in the face of a big scary corporation. There are two competing ideas. Either 1 there is some unknown force creating this problem(but doesn't extended to the entire human population for some reason) or 2 we know there are environmental causes. For #2, why systemically stack a drug on top if we know what the boogy man is? #1 we need to seriously buckle down on research on what the environmental/behavior factor is so we can bring everyone back to human baseline. Using drugs for people already in great suffering is one thing, but that is very different from widespread distribution as a preventative.
If you think I am advocating medication or implying that “people” are helpless against corporations, read again. I agree with most of what you say although I am not sure we need more research (although of course I don’t discourage it). Maybe one day we’ll prove that the government subsidizing corn so that big corporations (spun off from former tobacco companies as another comment pointed out) can super cheaply mass produce syrup which our evolutionary biology finds difficult to resist and market directly to children turns out to be bad for health outcomes and good for profits (for the medical industrial complex as well). Oh wait, we already know that.
Yeah? Even if I’m disabled, I should got for a walk, just because I want to?
Pretending the world is binary is a fun exercise, but it is always untrue.
No, but social conditioning normalises it and those in the lower socioeconomic areas of living buy the cheapest rather than most nutritional food and are way less likely to read informative articles or posts about healthy eating. It really is heavily influenced by a lack of supply of healthy affordable food.
And our answer to it is… another endocrine disruptor. But this time we’ll call it something else (GLP-1 agonists) and laugh all the way to the bank.
- diet alone
- diet + extra protein
- diet + exercise
- retatrutide
- tirzepatide
- semaglutide
tldr is that, despite some muscle loss, muscle as a percentage of body composition is higher (~50% FFM at start, whereas weight lost with GLP-1 meds ranged from 25%-39% of muscle). It also seems like the muscles will likely function better with less insulin resistance:
> Intentional weight loss causes a greater relative decrease in body fat than FFM or SMM, so the ratio of FFM/SMM to fat mass increases. Accordingly, physical function and mobility improve after weight loss despite the decrease in FFM/SMM, even in older adults with decreased FFM and SMM at baseline. In addition, weight loss improves the “quality” of remaining muscle by decreasing intramyocellular and intermuscular triglycerides and increasing muscle insulin sensitivity
https://www.reddit.com/r/tirzepatidecompound/comments/1dtzr2...
It seems to me we're curbing eating by flooding with insulin, when one of the big damaging effects of overeating is insulin floods. (Or perhaps I'm misreading, perhaps insulin floods are only bad b/c they cause insulin resistance which causes more overeating?)
A GLP-1 med stimulates the release of insulin slowly over a sustained period of time, not just as a massive spike when I eat.
Everyone (that isn’t diabetic) has a massive insulin spike when they eat something that spikes their glucose. GLP-1 meds don’t make that better in any way.
Which countries? As far as I know, most Western countries have roughly similar issues with obesity, at least directionally.
The essence of the argument against drug interventions is that the root cause is personal choice, and therefore a drug is a shortcut or crutch and does not address the root cause.
Many people feel that the real cause is the structural changes to the person's brain, body, and daily routine that reinforce, and are reinforced by the initial tiny over-consumption, which compounds over time. It's like a debt where you are stuck paying interest, no matter how much you'd like to pay off the debt. Addiction is a system in which the person's willpower goes against everything they have set up over decades. It's unreasonably challenging for nearly everyone to walk it all back. Insulin resistance is one of the most pernicious effects of even small over-eating over time. The body and mind do not feel satiated even though enough calories have been consumed. It's not "I would enjoy another slice of pizza", it can be "I am still starving".
And yes, the environment in which we live, where it is less stigmatized to overeat, and food is treated a certain way, more like a drug than fuel, is part of that system.
In a “traditional” weight loss strategy, you paired calorie deficit with an increase in physical activity (cardio, resistance training, etc). This increased physical activity helped protect you from muscle loss (your body tended to recognize that muscle was important so it burned fat at a higher rate)
With ozempic, people can lose weight without changing their sedentary lifestyle. Since your muscles are not needed, your body is free to grab energy from wherever it can. In some studies, almost half of weight loss can come from lean tissue.
Is it better to for an obese person to lose weight vs not lose weight? Absolutely. But it would be even better if they also changed their lifestyle to protect their muscle mass.
I'm not denying that under some circumstances like in the case of severely obese patients their bodies might think protein is better energy source than fat but in people with normally functioning bodies it shouldn't happen a lot especially if they get enough protein in their weight loss diet.
Nice one. I think it's a bad idea to be dependent on drugs for something you can achieve on your own, especially if the drugs don't have a long term safety profile. Pretty sure I read somewhere that they don't. If you're going to use them for a short period of time, that's fine. Don't say nobody warned you if that doesn't pan out though (or worse, you have a bad drug response).
I don't think this is just about a social club. Battling weight loss and habits is foundational to the human experience from the most recent centuries. Be it drugs, or anything else really that changes the nature of these challenges, people are going to feel discomfort because it's an attack on their understanding of the world, and in some ways, their beliefs.
You know by far the biggest benefit of doing hard workouts or doing extreme sports? Its not muscle mass nor how much they lift. Its about how it changes your personality, resilience to mental or physical suffering and ease of overcoming it. You know, hardest part of doing anything is winning the mental resistance game and just start it. Keep doing this every day in various forms for decades... A very strong resilient personality under various circumstances is almost an unavoidable result if you are putting in enough effort.
If somebody can't even stop themselves buying and paying for junk food at grocery store or has to overeat constantly otherwise getting anxious, that part of personality is missing and another, less desirable is present.
Who would you prefer to have as a close colleague you depend on, life long partner, a close dependable friend? Who do you think women would prefer subconsciously? Societies have always some form of castes, even hardcore communists have/had them, in US one of very popular is based on career/income/wealth. And this is just another dimension or caste, so let's not act like we are not humans with flaws and subjective preferences, we don't give our respect out for free.
These medication help with none of above, in fact they strongly reinforce such behavior and personality traits. But to each their own. One benefit I can see that they could start / help with movement from former to the latter, but that's rarer than people like to admit.
I have achieved much, largely due to my resilience. It would be very difficult to argue, after growing up very impoverished and getting to where I am today, that I am not resilient.
I played sports, lots. I competed in martial arts. Resilience isn’t my issue.
But thanks for telling me I have a moral problem I don’t have, instead of perhaps considering that what people are telling you might be the truth.
You don’t always know better, even if it flies in the face of what it is you do know.
"Getting fit and staying fit" is a form of social capital, because it's extremely hard and only within reach of a small portion of the population. "Being fit" is strongly aligned with "being attractive" which confers all sorts of cross-cutting social benefits.
Some people feel cheated when medication allows others to "effortlessly" join this social club, and then become vile and hateful in response.