Wii Fit, to be honest, is terrible. You're not improving hand-eye co-ordination or a number of other things whilst doing that. It's really a waste.

But hey. It's great to be in Canada.


Over-consumption without usage causes obesity.*
I eat a lot. I also play sports frequently. Genetics also ties into it a bit.
Fat people aren't naturally fat, but you inherit genes from your parents, who, if by any chance have diseases, increases your chance of succumbing to them.

You're imposing laws that the public would outright disregard.

Of course they do. But being fat hurts the world in more ways than you can imagine.

I don't believe it is the government's responsibility. If a particular person wanted to be healthy enough to act upon that want, they should, in the U.S., have the power to do so. People shouldn't learn to depend on the government, I like to use this as a sort of mantra. Sure, the government can be very helpful, especially with financial aid for college, but I don't want society to progress towards a general dependency on the government, as the government shouldn't be the cornerstone of the average family.

With that in mind, the government shouldn't do anything; it isn't the government's problem.

However, I do side with the option of innovation, creating scenarios in which everyone wins. I recently watched a video in school where a city installed musical notes on some stairs right next to an escalator to give a positive incentive for using the stairs juxtapose to the escalator -and it worked. There was a spike in the usage of stairs in that particular location. In innovative scenarios like this, everyone wins, and I back solutions like this. Of course, the city installed this system, not the government. It is up to those who are fat to fix their fat.

Wow Norm, we agree on something. Also, on top of this, my 'obese' father can lift the front end of the car. He's a haas.

I'm sure I'm about to restate everything everyone stated, but...

I've gained forty pounds after being diagnosed with a thyroid disease, and I'm slowly getting it under control. Can I say that it is what I eat? No, its my metabolism. I don't eat that bad, either. (inb4 kame's a fat chick).

I think imposing any sort of food tax is absolutely uncalled for...in Colorado, the only food taxed is if it's prepared (restaurant food, for example). Colorado is one of the fittest states in the US, probably because we have all sorts of different ways to stay active: rock climbing, hiking, nature trails, skiing, snowboarding, white water rafting, it goes on. It has more to do with self control than what someone eats. After all, McDonald's French Fries don't have any cholesterol. Likewise, eating 2000 calories worth of salad and 'light' dressing has the same calorie count of a 2000 calorie hamburger. Nutritionally it may be different, but our body stores calories as fat.

Sometimes it has more to do with how fast you eat than what you eat. If you eat too much in one sitting (even if your calorie count evens out to 1500/1700/2000, whatever you require), your thyroid will slow down and ultimately shut down after a while from over exertion. Eating late at night, after your metabolism naturally shuts down because you go to sleep, is almost 100% guaranteed to turn into fat. Skipping breakfast does not "wake-up" your metabolism, so when you get to lunch, it will be incredibly slow.

Maybe a better way to punish obesity is to implant a microchip into humans. Every time someone skips breakfast or eats after 11pm, the microchip records it and charges them.

...actually I like this idea. BRB White House

A fat tax is the way to go.

I have the same health complex as Excalibur, but I would gladly take one for the team if it meant drastically reducing the amount of ugly, miserable, fat people in the world. Me having to pay a little extra for a big mac even when my metabolism easily breaks it down, is a small price to pay for ridding this country of obesity.

I go as far as to say that this CAN work and be accepted by Americans, as long as it is confined to the area of sales tax. Treat it like cigarettes. Making people get check ups and such to be stamped as 'fat' is way too big-brother-ish. It has to be as simple as putting a 100% tax on fast food, potato chips, etc. This tax money would be mostly funneled into our soon to be gov. run health care, with a small portion going to paying for the huge tax breaks given to healthy-choice fast-food type restaurants. Fast food and obesity are gradually phased out of the economy.

You pay a few more bucks for: snacks, soda, fast-food
You pay less for: healthcare

and the best part is when it gets to the point that having more than 2 fast food restaurants in your town is unheard of, people will be so healthy that we can actually do something else with that health care money because people won't need it nearly as much.

Yes. It is.

How do I know this? My father, and brother are obese. My father was a professional lacrosse player, and my brother is just about to enter the level of semi-professional hockey. Well guess what, he's pretty goddamn active. He also eats like shit. Butter on everything, falls asleep in bed eating, melts bowls of cheese and eats it with a spoon, etc. I'm a semi-professional track athlete, and wrestling coach, and I get only a little more excercise than he does (he also plays, or has played, volleyball, baseball, lacrosse, track, cross country, basketball, soccer, football.), we're the same height, and yet, he weighs close to 50 pounds more than me. And I have more muscle mass. (Read: A LOT more muscle mass. I weigh 140 and can bench 180, he weighs 190 and benches 110, and he's the one that needs chest strength for his sports.) He's the sports-star in my family, and he's obese.

My father was the same way, ate shit his entire life, and because of it, he's very overweight. I'm one of three thin people in my family, we're all of the current generation, and we're definitely not thin because of genetics. I can yo-yo up to 20 pounds in a week if I eat weird, and I've gone down 20 in a day before (yay wrestling). Diet really isn't that hard, you just have to WORK.

As for the predicament, I think the greatest solution would be to, as Cent suggested, tax unhealthy foods enough that they are more expensive than healthy alternatives, and b), promote mandatory military reserve service for all over the age of 18, like countries such as Switzerland and Costa Rica (The Switzerland of the South) do. In addition, physical education should be compulsory in high schools. (As a corollary, I think the current school system needs major revising. Education is too general in highschool, especially when the motivated student already knows what they want to do.)


This makes no sense, if anything you should've gained the weight BEFORE diagnosis, not after, and once this actual illness is under control via (probably) thyroxine supplements, your weight will stableize to the same level it was before your hormone production shut down. And if you eat poorly, yes, you will still gain more weight. Furthermore, hypothyroidism is only relevant to 3% of the adult population, and has some pretty goddamn obvious symptoms, and is easy to treat. It's completely irrelevant in the conversation about what to do about obesity. (Oh, and incidentally, hypothyroidism CAN be caused by what you eat, so it is entirely possible that yes, you can say it's what you eat. And if it is, and you don't change your diet, the hormone supplements won't really help in the long run. This is the only time (in a modern country, where thyroxine is easily available) when obesity will actually be brought on by thyroid conditions, so any obese person who blames it on their thyroid is, at least partially to blame.)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 7 2009, 5:32 am by Syphon.

As for yo-yo weight: your body can fluctuate by 5-10 pounds in water weight, depending on your stress level (effects hormones), how you eat (higher sodium, higher retention), and how much you sleep. I assume that since you are so active, the water retention is much more profound in you.

Phys Ed was mandatory all four years in my high school. I can agree it needs to be stepped up - we had ballroom dancing as a PE class. However, we also had cycling, cardio (which is tae bo, boxing, step aerobics), and football/volleyball etc. We also were all forced to talk a swimming class to graduate.

Actually, as a point of bitter irony, I was about - oh two weeks - from finalizing my enlistment with ANG when I was diagnosed with my thyroid disease. My dad, the "obese" one left the ANG as a W-4.

I know it fluctuates in water weight, I am a former wrestler after all, and have tried to make myself as dehydrated as possibly before (I've fainted multiple times from dehydration), but nowadays, when I lose or gain weight, it's a food/excercise thing.

Oh, where I am it's only mandatory for grade 9.

That's pretty bad about the diagnosis, at least it wasn't something horrible. Hope you remain goiter-less.

Noted. I was saying it more for the other people than you, but I'm glad you know about water weight flux.

...

LOL the first time I went to the doctor with concerns, he felt my thyroid and said, "the good news is that it isn't cancer. The bad news is you're going to have to go across town to figure out what it is." So I'm pretty goiter free.

I'm probably going to hell....
hmmmm maybe not

fat people are harder to kidnap.

In any case, cheap food is the source of most obesity in the US, generated by Nixon's legislature on agriculture. We've steadily been growing accustomed to the cheap food, and can therefore buy more cheap food. This is not a very good thing, and it's hard to stop. The reason some people eat the cheap food and don't get fat, like ever, is due to genes. Most people, however, don't get the benefit of this, and have to a) work off the weight, or b) live with it. I choose to live with it because I'm lazy.

I've always been fat, except when I didn't eat during sophomore year of high school--the most miserable year of my life. Currently calculated BMI is like 29. I don't like to work out. I don't like physical activity. Running on a treadmill/around the block seems stupid and pointless waste of time to me, much like reading a book. I'll never get over this, so of course I'm never going to be in good shape. Currently I have marching band and swim conditioning to help me out in the physical activity department.

The best way to stop obesity is to just kill all the fat people, like excalibur wants should he ever become fat. Of course, that would be completely fascist and totalitarian. I've noticed a significant increase in taxes when going out to eat, something I don't like much when I realize that I'm paying much more than I used to, but overall it's probably a good idea.

I'd like to add my two cents.

Honestly, I'm sure some people have begun to notice that some healthier foods either:
- Cost more to purchase.
- Cost more to maintain, and make edible.
- Or, are complete scandals.

What I'd like to say is this. I'm shit-poor, and I don't have much to go on. I'm finding it hard to afford healthy foods, or to be able to purchase said foods, and every so often, when I try something thats supposed to be healthier for me, theres no effect.

I don't know about you guys, but I think obesiesity is getting forced on some of us, because frankly, I'd kill to be skinny like I once was, or like some of us are now.

But why should I have to pay to keep other people healthy? I do not think the tax will change eating habits. You can call a potato pretty healthy and there would be no tax on buying them but once I deep fry them.... People are still going to get fat even if you tax the "unhealthy" foods.

This one size fits all solution unhealthy food tax has loopholes.

You're assuming that there's one type of thyroid disorder? I had Graves' Diesease, an overactive thyroid: the week before I was diagnosed I lost about 20 lbs (yes, one week). After I started treatment, my thyroid did not even out as they had hoped, but they insisted I should still take my medicine, despite it horribly debilitating my immune system - god knows why - and causing me to gain weight at an increased weight, not to mention it horribly aggravated the other symptoms of Graves' Disease, such as anxiety and panic attacks. In the first year and a half, I went from 5mg of Tapozole to 20mg of it, and it fluxuated everywhere in between. It was shoddy diagnosis that did it. I could have had my thyroid removed from the get-go, but I that might have forced me into hypothyroid. So I took my chances. I am not taking my medicine anymore and I feel better and I've started to lose weight at a natural rate. Just don't tell my doctor. They think they're controlling my thyroid on 10mg daily.

Graves' Disease has a yet unknown cause. It is suggested that it is inherited, and it women are more susceptible to it: about 1 in 4 women I believe get it. My Aunt had it, so it could be from her, if inherited other fun medical problems from that side, too. It can also be caused by stress: when I was diagnosed, I also was in the process of getting over mono, and I was emotionally/mentally stressed for other reasons. It is an auto immune disorder, but a very slight one. Now that I stopped taking the medicine, my immune system is functioning normally. Graves' Disease is basically when your immune system sends antibodies to aggressively attack your thyroid, secreting more hormone that speeds up metabolism. It is important that I went in when I did, because given how progressed it had appeared to be, on top of the the current medical complications, I could have forced myself into thyroid storm.

So really syphon, do your homework. There's more than one type of thyroid disease. Also, this: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/graves-disease/DS00181

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 7 2009, 10:08 pm by Fire_Kame.

I don't see any loophole. The idea is that it is easier for people to be fat than thin the way our agricultural economy is set up. People would have to go out of their way to eat unhealthy foods, like how vegans have to go out of their way to avoid meat. Have your deep fried potatoes, have fun buying a deep fryer.

Healthy food prices can be lowered via subsidies resulting from the tax on unhealthy foods, and by making farmers work more. Alternately, and possibly more money-efficiently, the US government can raise the threshold for how much they expect farmers to produce, and slightly raise their government-income from the same taxes. Not sure which method is more money-efficient. Blame the government, y'all.

To deep fry something, you need oil or fat. I think that'll be taxed.

But that would be a problem. Those trying to survive while making said fatter foods will have to raise there prices, and volia. More inflation / unemployment. Its a bad situation.

I personally used to be extremely skinny. At about middle school, I began playing more sports, which actually made my situation worse. I began eating a lot more due to needing more calories for what i was doing. I played soccer (or football as some of you might know it), and i've never really eaten healthy. Once I stopped playing soccer however, my eating habits changed very little, and i gained some weight, to a point. Now where i'm in college, i barely eat again, which is fixing my problem.

I know people with thyroid problems, and i've seen the effects firsthand. It really can't be helped. My one friend will eat less than me, be full, and he outweighs me by about 50 pounds. It really can't be controlled, so don't act like you know that much about it syphon.

My thing is: i love food that is terrible for you. Putting a tax on it would hurt everyone, and really wouldnt be that fair for people who just want to have it every once and a while. Not to mention the fact that basically every fast food business would go out of business, and it would wreck the economy even more.

I say just stop providing health care for weight related problems (except in cases of weight problems associated with diseases). If people want to be fat let them die off themselves. If they know they'll only live to be 30 and they dont like that, then they can lose the weight themselves.

There is also a drug being developed that i read about in a magazine that is supposed to block fat from bonding to cells and the such. If any such drug was ever fully developed, it could solve a lot of problems. However, i have no idea about links to the article, but if i find it, i will link it.

That's not inflation darkling. Inflation is when the currency as a whole losses some of its worth, and everything goes up in price to make up for that loss of worth. Nothing is losing its worth here, and only 1 thing is going up in price. It is a good situation.

It would wreck the fast food economy, and give a huge boom to the healthy-choice food economy. Getting rid of 2 McDonalds in a mile radius of each other is a good thing.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 7 2009, 11:39 pm by Vrael. Reason: combined double post

So making every fast food company go out of business, getting rid of millions of jobs wouldn't make the economy worse?

The number of jobs doesn't determine the economy, the economy determines the number of jobs.