Re: Obesity excuses
Originally Posted by
Julie1962
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It is calories in and calories out
I don't personally agree. I here that adage many times and in truth I think it's totally over-simplified and hides a multitude of other factors.
Take simple sugar for example.
You can eat a teaspoon of sugar and you would know exactly how many calories that represents.
However you can eat that sugar with or without a quantity of fibre. e.g. drinking apple juice rather than eating an apple.
The person eating sugar alone will find that the body metabolises that sugar into energy almost immediately and if the body has no immediate use for that energy then it will be effectively stored away as fat. (This in itself is a simplification of the actual chemical processes)
The person eating the sugar with fibre will find that the body does NOT metabolise the sugar immediately. It happens over a protracted period during which time ordinary body functions and movement will use it up. So not exercise but just ordinary body life support and walking around the house and so on.
So, same calories in, but very different impacts to the body.
The other problem with so called "calorie counting" and associated diets is a person has absolutely no way of knowing how many calories they are using at any given time of the day. In particular at night which is when people lose a lot of weight through respiration and perspiration.
Life is a balance, everything is a balance. Tip that balance and things go awry.
If we eat bad foods we put too many calories into our bodies, particularly sugars with usually little fibre content. The average lifestyle is one which doesn't need the immediate energy those foods produce and so people get fat.
The notion of then doing exercises and long walks to somehow try to counter those negative effects is, to my mind, rather ridiculous. The answer is surely to simply eat better foods and eat them in the RIGHT COMBINATION.
That way the energy release is slow and gradual and an ordinary lifestyle will use up that energy. No need for special exercises, jogging etc.
It is for me, just a matter of balance.
We each have to determine the kind of lifestyle we want. Many like a low activity, sedentary lifestyle, which TBH is fine. But if that's the case then one needs to eat the volume of food that such a lifestyle requires, which is a small amount of food. Being a couch potato doesn't require a lot of energy!
People who have a specific need for a very active lifestyle, like say hard grafting landscape gardeners or factory workers lifting heavy boxes and constantly on the move, will need larger amounts of energy but will also need it throughout the day. So again the right types of food in the right combination are needed to provide that steady release of energy. Same for sports players too during their long matches.